Ok after reading the DW errata i have found some intersting stuff.

Tau Pulse rifles do 1d10+12 instead of 2d10+3. Which makes DW pulse rifles far more deadly than a RT one.

Which one should we use? Its the same weapon after all.

Simply accept that DW and RT are two fundamentally different games and any resemblence is just happenstance (and the two games arent supposed to be played together ever? Okok this one isnt really fair . We know that the games are supposed to be compatible.)

Any tip from one of the higher ups would be nice.

If the weapon has stats in the RT you use by default the stats and rules of the RT. So if the tau weapons do have rules and are present in RT you use the values present in RT and not DW. For the weapons that are not present in RT and are present in DW you can use the errata stats.

Because we are playing RT not DW and we use RT rules and weapons value not any other setting if the rules and weapons do exist in RT. That is my opinion of the official rules.

You can always house rule any way you want, but it is a house rule.

Tau weapons in DW are expected to be used on DW marines. Hence why they had to be boosted to actually be a threat to DW's protagonists.

Playing with DW stats in an RT game is going to be somewhat unbalanced. The two systems are not directly compatible, even on something like weapon statistics for "identical" weapons.

I wouldn't personally do it, but as thor said, your game = your rules.

Yeah ok hidden rant aside .

Basically cutting Astartes bolters back to normal and reducing their unnatural stats somewhat. Theyd fit right in with RT wouldnt they?

I kinda get the feeling everyhing in DW simply got bigger numbers bolted on but the relative scale didnt even budge the tiniest bit.

Compare the RT bolter of average damage 13 vs the Tau pulse rifle with 14 damage.

DW has 16 for the bolter and 17,5 for the pulse rifle...........aint it fun?

"This section presents a modified set of weapon statistics for Deathwatch, and is intended to offer Game Masters an option to speed up combat by reducing the number of dice rolled."

That's straight from the errata. Although I feel it's disingenuous for them to say that the damage was changed solely to reduce dice rolling, the fact that these rules are "optional" remains.

Of course Pulse Rifles are supposed to be superior to Bolters. They are indeed more powerful to Bolters in the canon. The fact is, in the Tabletop there's one Bolter. In 40k Roleplay there are many. FFG is simply trying to reflect that fact without making Pulse weapons overpowered. Is that inconsistent? Sure. However, it's still a good enough reason that I'm still going to use the RT damage for Pulse Weapons.

I just hit that, because BC has changed the bolters to be 1d10+9 pretty much permanently. So the optional part is pretty much just a word there.

If you ignore the optional part, itd be really strange.

2d10+5 tearing is actually alot more than the 2d10+2 for the supposedly higher powered Tau Pulse rifle.

So the Errata is very much in line with what the codices say; the core rulebook as printed not so much. (My Angels of Absolution would love S5 AP4 bolters..... with the Errata they wont get them).

Basically the errata are really good at bringing the numbers back in line. Now we just need a more permanent fix for all of this (RT v2.0?). OTOH im looking forward to BC at how they will handle alot of stuff.

Because shooting CSM with 1d10+12 and cultists with 2d10+3 isnt really that fun. Or logical for that matter.

Voronesh said:

Basicly until an errata appears for Rogue Trader that tells the deathwatch errata applies to weapons from Rogue Trader or modify the values of weapons what you said is irevelant as far as official rules are concerned. IF you wish to continue and assign values for weapons from deathwatch it is your game but it is nothing more than a house rule.

And between me and you I really hate the Marry Sue tau and their special hyper evolution of tech. Like going from fire and stone weapons and no agriculture to a star empire in less than 5k years is absurd for natural evolution of tech.

thor2006 said:

I absolutely agree. I've justified this in my mind through the Ethereals. It seems blatantly obvious that they are some sort of infiltrator that has essentially robbed the Tau race of their free will to turn them into a weapon of sorts. Xenology makes this fairly blatant by stating that the Ethereals have some sort of scent gland in their forehead that makes them impossible to disobey by other Tau. That book also has the implication that the Ethereals might be a sort of Frankensteinian abomination created by the Eldar.

In fact, this comes up all over Tau fluff. Look at the fluff in their Battlefleet Gothic rules. Their scientists were completely unable to create a FTL drive. Then, suddenly , they found an Imperial wreck in their home system with a fully intact warp drive. There's a bit of an ominous statement after that:

"No Tau commented on the sheer good fortune of finding the technology that they so desperately needed on their doorstep just when they needed it."

So it's quite obvious that something or someone is pulling the strings for the Tau.

However, the sooner people start talking about the "superiority" of Tau tech, the better. The Tau have yet to master the miniaturization of plasma tech for handheld plasma rifles (Real plasma rifles, not Pulse rifles. Back on the tabletop that was S7 AP2 versus S5 AP5. No contest.), they have yet to develop compact power armor, their ships are a pale reflection of Imperial tech, they have primitive shield technology, and more. Just because they have some better technology doesn't mean everything is better.

thor2006 said:

If i read Lexicanum right they did have agriculture and iron. So they were basically at the level of at least the Sumerians and Babylonians verging on Greek.

Basically: if you add 5k years to that, taking in mind that they were united under one common cause for all of that (not a single war amongst themselves until the succesion of those four worlds once they started conquering space) ... i don't think it's that far-fedged at all. Science tends to progress faster as there are bigger numbers of researchers (and remember that in tau civilisation there is actual scientific research by all of their tech caste, unlike the imperium where the majority of the adeptus spend their time looking for STC and scenting the tech or lubing it with oil). It also tends to progress faster as research is shared openly - again a condition met by the Tau but not the Imperium. If you take away the space travel then honestly: there's a shitload of technologies today that are better then those of the Imperium.

Historically speaking: if science is undertaken by a society on a broad level it'll progress very fast. Add to that a common purpose and whatever knowledge the ethereals get thrown in their laps or manipulate into it, especially taking in mind that far from all their tech is better, ... and yah, i buy it.

I have tgo agree with Badlapje here.

The Tau did have enough time to develop anythign they need. They did have some nice miraculous happenings in the past (ethereals and the warp engine), but their tech is stilla small but important step behind imperial make. Give it a few decades, maaybe a century and theyll be more advanced, whch wont happen, since GW will not fudge that much with their stuff.

(Crosses fingers and hopes Matt Ward doesnt nerf the Necrons as rumors say.)

(Crosses fingers and hopes that FFG gets the 40k rpgs into a more streamlined and uniform structure because of BC)

ONe way I've justified the differing stats from an in universe perspective is that the pulse weapons employed by the kroot in the Koronus expanse are either older models or downgraded models handed to them by the tau in the past. The ones in DW are either newer versions or ones made of superior materials that the kroot simply can't maintain or didn't have when they migrated across the galaxy.

Worth noting that the Kroot weapons listed in Mark of the Xenos and Into The Storm are pretty much exact copies as far as stats go. To my knowledge they didn't change anything at all, just added some heavier weapons to the selection. Unfortunately I can't check this as I don't have the books available right now.

George Labour said:

+1. I use the same reasoning for my games as well, though I plan on unifying all weapon damage soon where the same model/types vary between game lines.

Black_Kestrel said:

I actually hope that BC does that work for me instead. At least it might just give us a base statline from which the other changes could be retroengineered.

Its just weird that two S4 bolters have a damage difference of 4, but the jump from the SM S4 bolter to the Tau S5 pulse rifle is only 1.5 (because of the loss of tearing). If calculating with the nerfed bolter from the errata and the boosted pulse rifle form the same pdf....It only gets worse if you apply the DW core RPG as written. S4 Sm bolter is at 16+tearing vs the S5 Pulse rifle which is at 13........But FFG nudged in the right direction!