Just got my hands on Broken Chains at my FLGS and after an initial pass through it, I've noticed some changes to Full Auto (bonus changed from +20 to -10) and Semi Auto (bonus changed from +10 to +/-0) fire in combat.

The question I and my group have is simply this: Is this the way the rule works for the demo only, or is this a change that will become the standard going forward?

i personally am hoping for the latter.

To be honest, I think the Full/Semi Auto rules were in need of a little overhaul; it meant that even a low-powered weapon could easily ramp up a horrific damage tally in the hands of even a halfway capable individual. Sure, each individual shot might spang off the power armoured hulk of a Space Marine, but up against a good portion of player characters, even ones with fairly decent stats, the sheer weight of fire from a handful of mooks could easily put a player down hard. And if I sound bitter, it's because this has happened to be a fair few times. Also, since the majority of weapons that had Semi Auto capability also had a Full Auto mode, most people (in my experience) would skip Semi-Auto and just jump straight to Full Auto; you got a bigger bonus and it required only one degree of success per extra hit, so other than for ammo conservation there was little need in using Semi-Auto.

I like that Full Auto has a penalty attached to it now; it counterbalances the advantage of having the chance for multiple hits from a single attack action with the fact that your obviously not in as much control as to where those bullets are flying; even in modern warfare, the idea of spraying away with full auto is more to supress the enemy rather than to riddle them with bullets. I'm also pretty cool on the Semi Auto rule; while it doesn't have a bonus, it can still allow for a decent rate of fire, and will reward character who pump their Ballistic Skill up enough that they can reliably get enough extra successes to plant those extra shots, seeing as you need two degress per extra hit in that mode.

In short, mooks spray and pray, but real bad-asses use short burst fire.

Also, on an unrelated note, who else here is glad they've added an actual Parry skill?

Hi,

I havent seen Broken Chains, but going by the OP and the selection of previews I am definately hoping for the latter. The more I see of the tweaks coming to light, the more I like. Thinking about it, parry should be a skill shouldnt it? Admittedly I would hope it could be attempted untrained at a large penalty, but it is not something that everyone should be able to do while dodging must be learnt...?

Liking the idea that FFG are taking a looser role on level based advancement and going for more "cheaper if you stick to a consistent theme" type thingy. The changes to FA and SA fire seem to follow alot of house rules I have read on the forums, I've yet to play a gunbunny but the BC take does appear to balance the reward on "aim for a clean kill" vs "spray n pray", with each having benefits.

In short I'm eagerly awaiting the finished copy. Realistically it probably wont satisfy all of us gamers on every level, (and inevitable typos ) but importantly it looks like FFG are listening and evolving 40krpgs in a pleasing direction IMHO. The only sour note for me is looking at my beloved 40k rpg collection, and regretting that they are mechanically likely to be inferior.

Which leaves me hoping for the hundredth time for a complete 2nd ed, compatible for all lines, with sourcebooks to flesh out rules on various groups/societies/races.

Well, we noticed the change initially from the Combat Actions Chart. But a read through the individual descriptions for those actions corroborates the numbers on the chart, so its my thinking that this will become the norm going forward.

Based on that, I'll be implementing that in my regular DW game starting tonight.

Thanks for the responses. (If someone official still wants to chime in and confirm this one way or another, I think we'd all appreciate it)

-10? Ouch. Seems like autofire will become rather unpopular in BC. No point in bringing a heavy stubber along if I get the same number of low hits from an autogun. Granted, this possibility already existed before, but the +20 gave you a chance to hit with more rounds than the autogun could deliver in the same round.

Don't get me wrong: Even though my bad diceluck prevented me from indulging in such spectacular effects myself, I do understand that the sheer unpredictability of Full Auto was a problem (marvelously demonstrated by the old DW heavy bolter) ... yet I am somewhat sceptical that this solution may not break the system even more by making weapons with a high Full Auto ROF useless. I suppose it would come down to the characters' Ballistic Skill, but if this rule would be applied to Dark Heresy, ranged combat would get a lot longer than it is now - simply because everyone will use nothing else than his weapon's single shot setting to get the +10 bonus of their laser sight.

Full Auto in Dark Heresy was more or less a starting character's attempt to score at least one hit ("spray and pray", as you said) until they were able to buy a couple BS advances or invest in better gear that favored accuracy (such as the aforementioned sight).

I see it's pretty much about being caught between a rock and a hard place - stylewise, I would miss automatic bursts from weapons where you'd simply expect them from, yet on the other hand I agree that a single good roll shouldn't result in overkill. Perhaps another solution would have been to have a "diminishing returns" effect, or to have subsequent hits only increase the damage of the first one by a portion instead of (more or less) doubling it...

It'd also be different if the Full Auto shots could "challenge" groups of enemies instead of an individual, perhaps. When I'd unload a heavy stubber into a bunch of assaulting orks, I'd expect a large number of hits on different targets simply due to the small chance of a miss. That said, such situations would probably be represented by Horde rules - could it be that Full Auto and the respective Heavy Weapons are, as per the thoughts of the designers, supposed to become limited mainly to such encounters?

I guess that would make sense, though combat sounds like it is getting very abstracted then. Mind to post any results as soon as you've played a couple combat encounters with these rules? I'd be curious to hear how it actually turns out in a real game, and how it affects the "style" of a fight.

Dan_of_Hats said:

No:12 said:

That said, I too made the "mistake" of interpreting it as a skill at first, back when I started playing Dark Heresy. It took me three ranks until I noticed that I could actually Parry with my weapon despite not having the skill. Because it wasn't one.

I guess we could say that parrying an opponent's weapon may be a bit harder than just attacking him, and even though this becomes a moot point as soon as you purchase the skill (as I suppose it will immediately jump to taking 100% of your WS for the tests?) one could handwave that part. Just like Dodge, however, it should be a Basic Skill and thus be usable untrained at the usual 50%. At least that would be my hope.

Anyways, thanks for the heads-up! Can't wait to take a look myself.

Lynata said:

Yeah, the Heavy Stubber/Bolter were weapons with full auto in mind during their design, and that's reflected in their high Full Auto ROF, but plenty of weapons exist where the semi-auto mode went almost entirely ignored in favour of full auto because the rules gave you far more bang for your buck that way; why spend a Full Round Action firing my Specter Autogun to get a +10 BS bonus that requires and can get a max of 3 hits {requiring a total of a base hit and 4 additional successes beyond that for all of them to hit} when you could spend the same length of time for a +20 BS bonus and up to 10 hits in, needing only a base success and nine additional successes to get them all to land. Yeah, nine successes sounds harsh, but bear in mind that you can stack the odds with more than the Full Auto bonus; the size of the target, various items and the like can all bump your bonuses pretty high where it becomes possible, especially in later levels.

Like I said before, I like what they're doing with these rules because I think it makes Semi and Full Auto actions much more fair, balanced, and frankly realistic; even a gun without recoil is difficult to fire on full auto and land every shot, and it makes you feel like a badass when you pump your BS up to the point where you have a character who can take that penalty and still riddle an enemy with every bullet, not letting a single shell go to waste. I also think it'll mean that Semi-Auto mode gets used more often, as it'll be a more reliable way for early character to get those extra hits in than Full Auto. As for weapons like the Heavy Stubber, I'd not leave that by the wayside just because it gets a -10 penalty on Full Auto now; I'd wait and see if they're changing the weapon profiles around a little to reflect the fact that while some of those bullets are going to go wide, the base damge will still mean those that do hit are going to mess someone up. Heck, I think the base damage of a heavy stubber is nothing to sneeze at to begin with.

I can appreciate the viewpoint, but in my opinion, this is a change for the better.

Did anyone notice the new way swift attack works? The amount of hits depends on the initial roll, kinda overpowered me thinks. And also the skills went to +30, whats up with that?

Some of the rule changes:

1) Standard Attack now gives you +10 to BS/WS

1) Swift Attack is now kind of a melee-version of full-auto/semi-auto. +0 to BS/WS, but you get +1 hit for every 2 DoS, these may be allocated to anyone in melee with the attacker. The booklet does not address how this operates with Dodge (do you dodge only one hit, or multiple hits like with semi/full-auto?).

3) Semi-Auto is now +0 to hit, otherwise unchanged.

4) Full-Auto is now -10 to hit, otherwise unchanged.

5) Instead of Fate Points, you have Infamy Points equal to your "Infamy Bonus" (derived from the new tenth stat: Infamy).

6) Skills go up to +30

7) Legion bolt weapons use the errata-ed DW stats (1d10+9).

That's all the changes I noticed. Perhaps someone with a keener eye can find more?

ddunkelmeister said:

These changes looks very interesting and the change to semi- and full-auto is in the line I was thinking myself, though I did not go so far (I simply switched the bonuses, +10 for full, +20 for semi). As regards to the second point, it would seem likely that you dodge/parry a number of hits equal to your success, the same way you dodge multiple shots, since now the hits come from the same attack.

Also, is a standard attack still a half-action? I cant get it through my head that it might be some combination of aim+attack, and should thus be a full, please say it is a half-action?

Hi,

Lynata; Yes that was kinda what I was getting at. Everyone should be able to parry, but a practiced individual should have a much better chance, just like dodging. Swinging a weapon at a moving opponent is somewhat tricky, reacting in time and having the hand-eye coordination to parry/dodge/riposte/etc an incoming attack is far more tricky. Not sure what problems parry +30% might cause with a BQ defensive weapon....

But, that may be solved by new rules on swift attack? Another suprise. Still getting my head around that but my first thought was pleased that there will hopefully be less dice rolls during combat? One to hit roll with DOS, one doge/parry roll with DOS, damage from remainder...

ddunkelmeister said:

Now this one sounds interesting; it may seem a bit daunting since it's a big deviation from the rules as they currently stand, but by the looks of things they're trying to unite the Full/Semi Auto rules and the Swift Attack rules together so that you only have the one set of rules to remember, as they're functionally almost identical. I'd almost certainly say that Parry/Dodge reactions will reduce the DoS rather than outright block it, although there might be new rules put in place for it depending on how they intend to balance it; for example, I think they'll either change Best Craftsmanship rules so that the WS bonus only applies to attacks or replace it altogether, and they might introduce new systems for the Parry Skill, perhaps needing two DoS beyond the base success per additional hit parried, to prevent situations where two skilled swordsmen with the usual knacks (Lightning Attack, Wall of Steel, Step Aside, Counter Attack etc.) simply stand there flailing at each other and parrying/dodging everything they throw at one another.

What I'm interested in now is whether Swift Attack still requires a talent (which I doubt since it seems to be a core-mechanic now), what new talents they'll add to enhance these methods of attack, and how this will impact combat. Personally, I'm loving the sound of these changes; they really seem to put an emphasis on personal skill where it rewards people who focus in certain areas; lets face it, those of you who wanted to play a Khornate Berserker Forsaken CSM will be rushing into combat now with big grins on your face, happy in the knowledge that you can probably match (if not exceed) the hit output of your cultist freinds with the Full Auto firearms.

On a side note, does anyone know how two-weapon combat will work now? I think it might get excessive if you got a second set of Swift Attack rolls with the off-hand weapon, even with a penalty. Perhaps it'll give a modifier to the roll total like a +10?

Lynata said:

While I can't go into specifics about the new rules, Broken Chains does open the opportunity to discuss in some small way the elements which have been revealed. At which point, I think it's worth suggesting that people who have got the booklet take a look at more than just the modifiers to-hit... for example, look at what action is required for Semi-Auto, Full-Auto and Swift Attack...

Lynata said:

I don't know about you, but the way I've traditionally depicted "spray and pray" in DH/RT/DW is with the Suppressive Fire action. Accurate Full-Auto fire makes sense from certain perspectives (accuracy through quantity of fire), but causes issues when it becomes the only game in town (look at the Bolter stats in Rogue Trader... who would ever use Single shot or Semi-auto when there's the option to use Full Auto instead?).

These rules are, well, the culmination of a lot of collaborative effort over a long period of time. I, personally, think they're superior to those that came before, simply because they amp up the "risk vs reward" side of things - a single shot is easy, but only hits once, while a good, accurate full-auto burst is difficult, but can hit multiple times.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

As to the changes to the combat system itself I am in a wait and see mode. I am intrigued by the changes to Swift Attack and the logical extrapolation for Lightning Attack (one hit on success, one additional hit per degree of success to a maximum of a three hits at 2 DOS) as they should reduce the number of dice rolls and hence speed up combat. However, I will need to read the full rules and run a couple of combat encounters before I decide whether the changes we have seen so far (and the others we won't see until the book is released) are really an improvement to the the existing rules. Either way I am looking forward to the release of Black Crusade.

Noticed what appears to be a typo on the Full-Auto action - the penalty is -10 when used normally, but if you move and fire the penalty drops to.... -10. Could be a holdover from the RT rules, or it could be that the penalty is meant to drop by another -10.

Wonder if these rules will transition to the other games?

I'm now hoping for another printing of the other games that will give these rules changes a little more publicity.

jareddm said:

I think it'd be difficult to reprint three entire game lines to follow the same ruleset, especially as each one has brought new variations of those rules, and they would still require adaption to the class-tree progression systems that Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader and Deathwatch all have. Black Crusade has some very interesting rules in place that I'm liking the look of, but just because these rules seem, in my opinion, better doesn't make the older editions defunct or any less playable or enjoyable for it.

Black Crusade will be a big departure from the other three, as it needs to be given the drastic change in tone, but I'll still enjoy playing the Rogue Trader rules as given, and if I feel an overwhelming need to then I'm sure it won't be a great hardship on my part to cut and paste a few of these new rules into the games I run, but I don't expect FFG to make such a massive overhaul of the old game systems just to bring them into line with this one; a core rule compendium that covers all three perhaps, but if they're going to refresh the line I'd expect them to go all out on the second edition rather than just a reprint with a few rules amendments.

Dan_of_Hats said:

This is more of what I was referring to, as opposed to the reprint that was done when the switch was made from BI to FFG.

Standard Attack gives a +10 even without the Half-Action Aim? That seems kind of... odd. Why not just increase everybody's BS and WS by 10?

bogi_khaosa said:

I think it's to balance the new rules they have for Semi/Full Auto and Swift Attack; it seems to imply that thrashing around with your sword/emptying a clip of ammo makes it difficult to land every blow on target, where as a single attack has the advantage of having your full attention and control behind it. I've not heard how Aim actions factor into these rules, but I imagine it'll have much the same effect as it currently does.

I only have a hunch with this, but I have a feeling that there will be new rules for parrying/dodging that apply themselves differently to single attacks and multiple ones. In the case of multiple attacks, each success on the parry/dodge will reduce the number of successes the opponent rolled to hit you, but in the case of a single attack I think it might be that you'll have to beat their successes on the attack roll in order to parry, rather than just to roll under your own Weapon Skill. You could wind up with scenarios in the other games where it never paid to make a single attack unless someone else had already stripped an opponent of their reactions, because if they were a competent melee combatant, they'd block you no matter how amazing an attack you made, which could feel a little cheap against opponents with multiple reactions.

Besides, raising everyones WS/BS by +10 means everyone is that much better in ALL circumstances requiring that skill, rather than just the one. Giving a +10 to certain actions or a -10 to others means that some people will at least be able to defend themselves a little better, albeit with only a single attack, where as combat machines will be able to churn out loads of carnage despite the penalty and demonstrate their superior skill appropriately

Might they be using this as a testing ground for these rules? I wouldn't be shocked to see a revised edition of Dark Heresy in a year or two featuring changes from all the later lines.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

Since our Friendly Neighborhood Author is still bound by the chains of NDA, I'll just point out that all of those actions are now Half Actions.

ddunkelmeister said:

Interesting. If the rules for Aim remains the same, this will make for a rather interesting choice when it comes to a move and shoot or an aim and full-auto.

ddunkelmeister said:

That's... I can't properly express how overjoyed I am. Ever since the first player in my first DH campaign got his hands on an autopistol, I haven't seen a single fight in my game that didn't look like two firing squads duking it out, with taking cover as only kind of tactical thinking. It worked the same way in RT and DW as well - ranged combatants just stood where they were or took one turn to run for cover, while melee combatants either ran or charged, and then everyone stood in place performing full attack routines.

With the new rules, I'm hoping to actually see some tactical movement, and generally greater diversification of performed actions.