What is everyone's opinion on the in-game effects of using the standard weapon damage table found in the core rule book vs. the one published in the errata found on this website?

The errata .pdf has a note mentioning that it is designed to speed up play because fewer dice are rolled, but I am interested if anyone has noticed much of a difference in the damage output of weapons. Are fights easier/harder if using these updated values vs. the standard ones?

JMorgenroth said:

Should be slightly harder fights/longer fights due to bolt weapons being nerfed (lower ROF and damage). Makes for more tactical fights because pre-errata the Heavy Bolter ruled everything. Which was as much a reason for the errata as speeding up imho.

Alex

The Tau Pulse Rifle is now a functionally better gun than the Bolter, which is as it should be.

How do you guys handle adding errata to the books' rules? Having to check to see if there's errata on whatever you're doing/using seems like a pain in the arse.

JMorgenroth said:

I've found this to be a very, very silly justification for errata. FFG-WH40K is a pretty dice-light system (even if it is rules-heavy). You have percentile and, at most, like 10d10 dice (typically for high-end psy powers; the next closest is probably lascannon or vehicle weapon damage). Rolling 6d10 is NOTHING compared to, say, Exalted or Scion or Shadowrun, where you're easily rolling 20+ dice with great frequency. Really, the point of reducing weapons from 2d10 to 1d10 rolled damage is to lessen the occurrence of Righteous Fury. Obviously the more d10s you roll, the greater overall chance of rolling 1 or more 10s.

I agree that some of the weapons (bolters) needed a nerf, though I dispute certain aspects of the extent of the nerfing, mainly because bolters have always been portrayed as full-auto assault rifles and now for whatever reason they're semi-auto. I see the balance issue but I think it could have been better resolved with the long-existing fluff. Was S/2/4 really that bad, if you reduced overall damage done?

By the same token, I think the heavy bolter RoF nerf was a little heavy-handed (especially without using Black Crusade autofire rules) because now it's significantly easier to hit max RoF on big targets or Hordes; maybe less overall damage, but IMO also sort of unsatisfying. Pre-errata Devastators actually get something out of investing in BS-improving wargear; 6 DoS pops up pretty commonly though, and the ones I've played with always got a real surge of enjoyment out of hitting 8, 9, or somehow 10 DoS. It was rare enough to be a really cool moment. IMO, 6 is not near as news-worthy.

I think that plasmas and meltas needed a lot of help to be competitive under the core rules, but I've seen better melta ideas on these forums than the "double Pen" errata to the weapon quality, and how just doubling Pen actually doesn't help much against high-end vehicles like Land Raiders, which meltas are supposedly designed to counter. Plasma still seems a little weak and Volatile is a worthless Quality when fighting 2/3 of the most-commonly faced/major enemies in the Reach: xenos (because it's fully obviated by Deathwatch Training). It's only worth anything if you're fighting Chaos and even then...again, I've seen houserules that like more.

I find it funny that Astartes Assault Shotguns are now even better than bolters at close range, especially with the right ammo (read: the kind that gives Felling). Still unsure about the errata to lightning claws and whether they lost the special rule from the Core.

Do agree that Tau baseline weapons being better than Imperial ones is good from a fluff perspective.

I'm not sure if most fights are significantly harder. Special ammo still owns if properly used, especially vs. tyranids (hellfire) or hordes (metal storm). Combat might just take longer overall and expend more resources because of RoF reduction, which leads to fewer hits per turn against hordes (the main time-consuming enemies to kill).

Kshatriya said:

But there are going to be millions of pulse rifles on every Tau world (apparently people estimate there are 100 million kalashnikovs on Terra today), while the Astartes only field a single million Bolt Guns in the entire galaxy.

AluminiumWolf said:

I'm pretty sure SM armories have more than 1 bolter for every marine.

And I'm not sure what your point is. The fluff portrays Tau as sort of scarily-advanced compared to the Imperium, having surpassed probably 30,000 years of human progress in a measly 5000 years or so (granted, they didn't know ONLY WAR for the vast majority of their history, unlike the IoM). And Tau wargear is effective but there's no indication it's built to last millennia, unlike Imperial gear.

Also consider that the standard match-up is not 1 fire warrior vs. 1 Space Marine. In such a situation, the SM would win pretty handily. Instead you have like 50 Fire Warriors firing on a squad of SMs. The Tau have volume compared to the Space Marines. The Space Marines have skill, toughness, better training/experience, know no fear, special ammo, etc.

Getting back to the original question, as a GM I prefer the errata'd stats- I cringed every time I read posts on this Forum bragging about killing Hive Tyrants in a single round...

For my group there wasn't a single complaint in switching to the errata damages, less dice with a higher average damage went over well. The Devastator using the Heavy Bolter had no complaints either.

For me the GM it seems a bit more balanced, I like it. End of the day, epic levels of damage are still dished out, the Astartes did not lose their awesomeness.

Personally prefer the 'alternate' stats by far. As AK indicates, the Heavy Bolter overshadowed nearly every other weapon in the armory, and players were Righeous Furying all over the place, and even the toughest enemies would go down without much of a fight. As a GM, it makes balance easier and the damage output from your team more predictable.

I added a 'supressing' quality to the baseline boltguns however, as I really like the tactical opportunities presented by that simple combat action. I also permit Overwatch with boltguns as well.

The combats take the same time- as a GM I'm less likely to throw 5 mag 100 hordes at my team now in order to create an encounter that neccessitates rolling, I'll throw 2-3 35s or something similar. Makes the combat more personal, and keeps the sense of scale feel better to my group and me.

As for checking the errata, it really comes down to just knowing the rules. Read them, know them, remember them. Also, all of my players have the errata and have read it start to finish as well. Even if one of us forgets that a rule has been updated, someone at the table will likely remind the rest that we're doing our jobs wrong. And if you forget a rule for a session or two, it's rarely the end of the world.

Charmander said:

Most importantly, GMs were righteously furious at RAW.

Charmander said:

Yep, semi-automatic fire of explosive (X) shells should be suppressing. But then again that is part of thre reason why I use the old ROF. Mechanically it might be semi-auto but for the foul xeno at the receiving end of the stream of fire, it feels quite like full-auto.

Actually can DAs still do sustained suppression with bolters and standard plasmaguns now?

Alex

Quick question to those using the errata:

Obviously Devs with the HB will have no trouble hitting the heavy bolter's full-auto RoF of 6. I wonder if other SMs are having trouble hitting the normal bolter's semiauto RoF of 3, given that it takes 2 DoS per 1 hit (compared to the old bolter full-auto RoF of 4).

Seems like ultimately both the heavy and the normal require 6 DoS to hit maximum RoF under the errata, where in the past it was 10 for the heavy and 4 for the normal bolter. Just curious if you've seen hits from normal bolter users decrease just from the rolls since they're now looking for 2 DoS per hit at a base roll of +10 instead of 1 DoS per hit at a base roll of +20, aside from the new cap to overall hit potential (3 under the errats vs 4 under the Core).

ak-73 said:

So you use errata damage amounts paired with Core RoF? Or if it's mechanically semiauto is your bolter RoF like S/4/- ? I'm a little confused.

ak-73 said:

I think so. According to the RAW you could always Overwatch with semi-auto fire. Sustained Suppression actually affects Overwatch actions, not the more narrow Suppressing Fire action (though you can do a Suppressing Fire Overwatch, and all Overwatch triggers Pinning).

Kshatriya said:

In my group it depends- those that invest in BS regularly hit 2-3 times, those that have abandond BS are lucky if they can hit once. Overall the average number of hits produced by the kill team is reduced- and as a result, they have actually explored alternative weapons like plasma weapons and flamers.

Kshatriya said:

Yeah, I regard the errata as a modification of my own ideas (see my sig below) pre-RoB and pre-errata. Basically old ROF with new damages unless the new damages deviate too hard from my stats. Oh and the HB needs to have his ROF cut to 6 or 7 but that can be gleaned from the thread too, I guess.

Alex

AK, how's that working out so far? That was my general idea re: bolters but I had yet to come up with a satisfactory RoF for the heavy bolter that was properly balanced and on a level that I considered appropriate for a heavy bolt weapon.

Well, it's all still evolving but I'd say that it all doesn't make that much a difference. To original RAW works to some degree, the errata stats work too, probably better, so a mix of either can't be totally bad if you use common sense.

I should add that I use multiple Righteous Fury dice. I should add that I will likely use a system where Critical Damage isn't cumulative anymore (which then necessitates that there is a fair likelihood of scoring an attack that will get 8 or more damage points past the enemy soak to kill it; but that ties in nicely with multiple exploding d10).

I'll probably also revise modifiers for single shot, semi- and full-auto. I'm not entirely sure which role I want Semi-Auto to play yet.

Alex