bogi_khaosa said:

City fighting isn't normally very long range and the Arbities could always switch to slug or executioner rounds or they could bring their bolt weaponry to bear.

I would place my money on an Arbities kill team over an IG unit in a city fight. I doubt they would clash in an open battlefield.

ItsUncertainWho said:

Me too.

They got better Armor, suppression shields, better weapons, special ammo.

And not to be forgotten the shotgun is not only an effective instrument of death, it's about shock and awe as well.

And the guard have artillery, tanks and unlimited numbers. The guard would be stupid not to completely destroy the entire district if they find that the arbites are there.

The winner can always rebuild.

Umbranus said:

There's no way Arbites>Guard in a war scenario. An Arbites kill-team can bring to bear shotguns, bolters, and a Rhino, while Guard Vets are packing flamers, heavy bolters, and a freaking Chimera that in the best case for the Arbites is loaded with another two heavy bolters. Somehow, I doubt Guardsmen will be scared by a few shotguns, considering they regularly fight Orks.

Back on topic, the shotgun should definitely be 1d10+6, though I would vote for the bolter to be moved up to 2d10 and all the other weapons moved up accordingly to scale with TT. If we use S3 lasguns (1d10+3) and S9 lascannons (5d10+5) as the lower and upper bounds, the rest of the weapons can be placed appropriately, setting S4 weapons (bolters, mainly) around the 2d10 mark (probably 1d10+8 or 9), S5 (heavy bolters) around 2d10+5, S6 (multilaser) at 3d10+x, S7 (autocannon, plasma gun) around 4d10, S8 (krak missile, meltagun) at 4d10+8 or 9, and then we have the S9 lascannon at 5d10+5. Currently, the plasma gun dealing about as much damage as the heavy bolter just doesn't make sense, as it's described as one of the few weapons that puts down Marines with ease, on par with antitank weaponry.

The problem with 2d10 bolters is that they, unlike lascannons, are a weapon that PCs can expect to get shot with on nonrare occasions, which means a lot of PC deaths.

The Clip Size should be small as per fluff, the damage the same as the Space Marine Shotgun.
The damage is right, I think the typo in the stat line is the Clip which should be 4 in my opinion.

My group has already revised the shotgun rules, a normal shotgun in our game does 1d10+6 I, Pen 0 and scatter works up to Short range instead of pointblack.
A shotgun should be a terrible weapon up til 15 meters....1d10+4 is just to little compared to the full auto autogun.

1D10+9 I pen:0 scatter

Yes, it is nasty. Yes, that was the point. What this does is make Adeptus Arbites on a war footing capable of actually hurting reasonably tough opponents without being completely overkill game-wise. Fire a normal shotgun (1D10+4 pen:0 scatter) at a moderately tough mutant or soldier with moderate body armour and the average hit will bounce off doing little to no damage (average damage roll 9.5 against a soak of 8-9). Now form a firing line of an entire squad of Arbites... And all 10 troopers blazing with burst fire from a combat shotgun might drop one target, perhaps two if they cluster their fire into the same targets until they drop and then shift fire as a squad (very unrealistic). Add cybernetics, more obvious mutations, carapace armour or even so much as an improvised shield to the mix and the iron-fisted authority of the Arbites becomes a very bad joke. So.... Insert BIG-ASS-shotgun (but still much weaker than those used by Astartes) into the equation and you get an average hit of 14.5 impact damage... and now 2-4 hits will probably put a generic Imperial Guardsman down!

For comparison:

Generic "mortal" bolt weapon (1D10+5 X pen:4 tearing) does an average of 12.5 explosive damage and bypasses your armour.

Godwin-De'az Pattern Sororitas bolter (1D10+5 X pen:4 reliable, tearing) does an average of 12.5 explosive damage and bypases your armour.

Godwin Pattern Astartes bolter (1D10+9 X pen:4 tearing) does an average of 16.5 explosive damage and bypasses your armour (assuming the firer has NO talents, traits or special abilities to enhance their lethality, an unlikely possibility.)

Either of these weapons delivers this punishment from several hundred meters range. The shotgun does it's hurting mostly out to about 15 meters, then tends to start bouncing off of even modestly protected targets.

Why don't Skitarii use the Arbites shotgun? Logic. "Typical" small-frame Skitarii combat kit features a mix of full-auto shotguns (Vanaheim pattern) and hellguns, which optimizes the UNIT for engaging light or heavy foes as battlefield conditions evolve. The individual is inefficient, except as a component in a greater machine. They will also be supported by large-frame (Ogryn or "augmented human" base) Skitarii when fully commited to battle, so multilasers, lascannon, missile launchers, multimelta, and heavy bolters (depending on Magos preference) will be present in auto-stabilized self-deployed packages. Combat and gun servitors along with possible Tarantula deployment serve as a force-multiplier for the Skitarii legions.

If Battle Sisters do not break your game, neither will a fully kitted Arbitrator. The key here is they remain relavent to higher tier games.

I don't get your reference to the Skitarrii and their logic. The Vox-Legi shotgun is better than their Skitarri shotgun, no ifs ands or buts. You can wax poetic on the cogs of the great machine, and their cyber-ogryn drop-troopers and what not, but it is ultimately illogical to equip yourself with the weaker of two weapons. There is no possible explanation that they would prefer to equip their elite troopers with the weaker "full-auto" weapon, when they have the much more effective semi-auto shotgun at home.

Also, I'm not sure what kind of reasonably tough opponents you have your arbitrators fight, but 8 or 9 soak!? That's insane. A guardsman has 6 soak. 7 MAYBE.

Luckily, the arbitrators don't use their shotguns to deal with renegade guard invasions. They have bolters, explosives and all sorts of other fun equipment in their arsenal to deal with just such an occasion.

Hive gangers have what, 5 soak? 4 against non-primitive weapons. Fighting in a hive, where being able to peg someone from 500 metres away is meaningless. Now an average arbitrator, point blank at the roaring crowd... BS 35 + 30 PB + 10 Semi Auto... = 75. Assuming an average roll of 50, that's 3 hits with the shotgun. Each hit doing an average of 15 - 4, 11 damage. That's 33 damage. That's 3 dead rioters. We use a regular combat shotgun and it goes down to 6 damage a hit, or 18 damage. Enough to kill one or two.

The point being, a regular shotgun is still more than enough. It says in the B.O.J. that the Vox-Legi is designed to intimidate, with a load chamber and all that. Doesn't say it needs to pulp things. There are excerpts about Astartes weapons that say that to fire them as a mortal would break your arms in 40 places and send you flying (paraphrasing, naturally). Yet the arbitrators can fire ones pretty much just as powerful without issue?
Perhaps the marines have pen, but that seems to be more a quality of the ammunition than the simple size and calibre of the projectile.

Either way, it seems silly. The S.O.B. in our game has remained balanced because she is hamstringed by certain elements outside her control. Bolts are very rare, for example. She's a walking beacon, she can't use stealth, she has to follow very stringent codes of faith and quasi-chivalry, etc.

Here's an example: Some daemon TB 8 against non-warp attacks. S.O.B fires a 16 throne bolt at it, hitting for Tearing 1d10-3. Let's say she gets lucky rolls an 8, and does 5 damage.

Next the shotgun waltzes up, on fairly easy to acquire rolls gets 3 hits, and voila. Doing an average of 18 damage in one shot for 0.05 thrones. Like I said, where can my inquisitor get one of these? Oh.... not to mention if you throw Executioner shells into that thing.
It now does 1d10+13 damage with 1 pen, re-rolls to hit and ignores cover. Plus scatter and reliable, semi-auto, and a clip size of 14. Oh and you can load an executioner in without having to reload the entire gun, just in case.

Now I can understand that this makes the shotgun more relevant at higher levels, but I'm of the firm belief that this kind of gaminess needs to be avoided. A shotgun is what it is, and it should not be as effective as plasma weapons, bolters, power swords etc. Once that arbitrator reaches end game, he should (like the proctor marshals and judges actually do) take up a bolter, for example. He's outgrown the tried and tested little shotgun when dealing with daemon princes, arch-magos hereteks and their ilk.

My group and I are staying far, far away from this. I merely posted to see others thoughts, and the vast majority seem to think it's grossly overpowered. There are a few who have tried to rationalize it, and while I don't buy their arguments, it is a beauty of RPing that nobody is going to burst into my living room and beat me down for playing "the wrong way".

EDIT: I don't mean to sound overly confrontational. Everyone has opinions, and they are all valid. I guess the best way I can describe my wariness of the weapon is that if I allowed it, then everyone in my cell would want one. The tech-priest was already infuriated that his 'top of the line Vanaheim was a cap-gun in comparison. I know that the range is the only legit criticism, but in my years of experience playing this game, range has been a factor in I think two scenarios.
Then I could limit it to just Arbitrators but that's playing mega-favourites, and it all just starts going downhill from there, in my opinion.

bogi_khaosa said:

Bolters are not meant to be a standard weapon for the opposition until at least mid levels. At those levels, the PCs should be wearing good armor and be smart enough to not stand in the open and take their bolts to the face like a space marine.

Yes, high damage means a serious chance for PC deaths. That's kinda normal: guns kill people. Bolt guns kill people real good. Whether you go to 2d10 or just up the damage by 1-2 points, I think they could use a buff.

ZillaPrime said:

I think the more balanced solution would have been to simply give Arbitrators armour-penetrating rounds for standard combat shotguns, rather than give them "magic shotguns" that do more damage than the best non-Astartes small arms in the Imperium...

ZillaPrime said:

It's not much weaker than an Astartes shotgun. It's the same as an errated Astartes shotgun.

This is power creep from allowing Batlle Sisters with power armour. Pretty soon starting Guardsmen are going to be toting around autocannons.

bogi_khaosa said:

Except that the Astartes shotgun has pen 4 and, i believe, a slightly larger clip.

You are correct, profile is Basic 30m S/2/– 1d10+9 I 4 18 Full Reliable,Scatter

It's still power creep though.

I'll add that that semi auto fire also helps the Astartes version, though it is creep (to a degree). It shouldn't matter in RT much though (I know this is DH).

I think the best way to balance this weapon is by reducing the ammo capacity to 4 or maybe 6.

This way it still retains the idea of it being an giant overengineered shotgun without it breaking the game.
The alternative would be limiting the damage but I feel like that takes away half of what makes this weapon what it is supposed to be (the other half is the fact that you can single load special ammo).

GreyHunter88 said:

But the Sisters of Battle are given two reloads for their weapons in between missions? Stated right there in the book, where it lists all the gear they can requisition.

I have to admit I have started to look at this new shotgun like the Russian KS-23 in 23mm or 4 Gauge

But more set up like UTAS UTS-15 Shotgun in look

And I have to admit it is a cool idea...