Hi,
we play a group with Dark Heresy and Deathwatch.
And we wonder why the Bolt shells in DH are much lower then they in DW.
I mean 1D10+5 in DH against 2D10+5 that’s a huge difference. Can anybody tell me why?
Thanks.

The reason is that when bolters were introduced to Dark Heresy, a subset of fans thought their damage was far too low to accurately represent what bolters are in the background material. They're sort of the Desert Eagle of the 40k universe; hugely overpowered, hugely expensive, and impractically difficult to maintain. They're meant to turn people into red mist and break your arm in nine places with the recoil, so 1d10+5 was not actually a lot in comparison. Bolters are meant to be to normal guns what Marines are to normal people; bigger, better, and more punchier.

So their damage in DH was seen as lacklustre, and to their credit FFG actually listened to these fan's comments and tacitly agreed with them by vastly increasing the power of bolters in Deathwatch, with the fluff explanation that Astartes bolters were larger and better-made than bolters made for human use. Basically, the Astartes bolters were "real" bolters, and the ones in DH were bolter-lite, made especially for puny mortal hands. That's the official reason; the real reason is that the original DH bolter stats didn't accurately reflect how powerful bolters are in the fluff.

It worked a little too well, because then a totally different subset of fans started complaining that bolters in Deathwatch were so powerful that no other weapons came close to being as useful (which is really more of a problem with the rapid fire rules than a problem with bolters, but whatever). So FFG released an optional weapons table in the errata (which is floating around the net somewhere) that nerfs bolters a bit by reducing their damage to 1d10+9 and removing their ability to rapid fire. Whether you prefer those rules is an entirely different kettle of fish.

tl;dr the DH bolter stats were too weak, DW buffed them. You can bet that a Black Crusade and any future edition of DH will use the new stats.

Fluff wise, the matter is actually discussed in the Inquisitor's Handbook. It goes into the general size difference between "human" bolters and "Astartes" bolters. This is reflected in the rules in that a DW boltgun (a basic weapon), is a heavy weapon to a non Astartes character.

Also, one of the boltguns in the Inquisitor's Handbook is listed as using bolter shells marked for Astartes use, and its damage code is quite similar to the DW bolter (although the RoF is much lower, for human use).

I think Black Crusade used DW's errated boltguns rules. Not sure here.

Stormast said:

The demo uses them, at least.

Still, the errated rules aren't that much lower - only 1-2 damage less on an average shot.

MILLANDSON said:

It varies by weapon, but base damage hasn't changed a great deal for bolt weapons. It's the Rate of Fire changes that really hurt their lethality.

Mh ok we can use the weapon list from the errata. But what list can we use for the DH player?

Or should we say that the higher damage came from the precise shoots of the marines?

Marines use bigger bolters.

Marine Bolters fire larger bolt rounds which do more damage.

If an average human were to use a marine bolter, they'd likely dislocate their shoulder, the Astartes bolter is that much more powerful.

Bolters issued to normal humans (not space marines) are not as large and fire a smaller less powerful bolt round which does less damage than the space marine bolt round.

This smaller less powerful round allows normal humans to fire their smaller bolters without tearing off their arms.

I don't buy the `humans use smaller bolters' use smaller bolters argument, it just doesn't sit with old fluff that I'm used to. I sure space marines use better quality ammo and guns but that doesn't seem sufficient to account for the huge differences. Clearly this is a game compatatbility issue, the power of the Astartes is too great for them to be on anything like equal terms in almost any respect with regular humans. No amount of new fluff is ever going to take that problem away. In my heart I want to make all bolters roughly equivalent but that would make pure DH games very deadly. I'd like to see a pan-system weapons list but this isn't going to happen.

Of course none of that realy helps with the issue. I'd try it with the humans slightly weaker boltguns and see how that goes. No one says you have to stick to the rules as written.

Partario said:

Well no, he doesn't, but he wasn't asking for house rules, he was asking why they were different - the answer to that is that Astartes use bolters that are of a quality well beyond those created for mere humans, not to mention that they can use bolts with better propellants that make the bolt fire faster due to them being able to soak up the greater amount of recoil caused by using such propellants.

It makes sense to me that a giant, bulky supersoldier in powered armor can make use of weapons far bigger and stronger than a normal guy. Remember that bolters still have recoil. It also makes sense to me that the technology for making "civilian" grade bolters would be lacking compared to the "real deal" - first, there is little incentive to perfect the tech, as bolters are too expensive for widespread use, and second, there is only so much you can do about recoil.

Note that bolters are still pretty good in DH/RT, and Astartes bolters will be an overkill against all but the toughest enemies on those tiers. Bolters are good where they are now.

Well the "mortal"-pattern bolter is the original, predating the SM by 5,000 odd years - some fluff suggests they were developed from STC designs, possibly for an anti-Ork weapon. The big E stated that his SM would be armed and armoured with the best available, and given that boltguns and powered armour were the most powerful around Terra at the time, naturally they were selected to be the iconic armaments, and then suitably up-sized and upgraded for the use of a superhuman, with Mars onboard to troubleshoot the process.

I think I'd just retcon the fluff to say "mortal"-pattern bolters were .50 cal weapons, and that Astartes-pattern bolters & mortal-pattern heavy bolters were .75, with the Astartes-pattern heavy bolter in a league of its own at 1.00 (or is it .100? Can't remember).