Lecram said:

It's not just the feel, it changes the whole metagame.

Choosing your weapon is a game of risk vs reward. The actual probabilities are pretty complex to calculate due to amount of variables, but the trends are pretty intuitive and boil down to using the heaviest stuff on heaviest and slowest enemies, peppering frail but nimble enemies with hail after hail of light gunfire, and finding an approximate golden mean for more balanced enemies. Another way to view it would be, against any particular enemy, you always want the lightest, fastest weapon capable of doing significant damage to him. This is, for example, why Astartes master all sorts of weaponry and why it makes them so dangerous - potentially, their diverse training and vast armories allow them to engage all kinds of enemies in the most optimal manner.

Now, if each Dodge roll becomes contested, the whole "choose your weapon wisely" minigame goes down the crapper, because suddenly the most heavy-hitting single shot weapons also have the best chance of connecting, and thus become king of the hill against all sorts of enemies. Just grab a Lascannon and a Melta Pistol as your sidearm and you can go to town. Same with the melee weapons - say hello to your friend Power Fist, you're going to spend a lot of time together.

All in all, making Dodge rolls against single attacks contested would be a great step towards the One True Build, and that's always a bad thing.

I know the sniper debate is long ago in this thread, but I thought it was worth mentioning that Finnish sniper Simo Hayha, or "White Death", and holder of the title of most sniper kills ever recorded (~500 sniper kills, ~200+ submachine gun kills, all in 100 days) accomplished many of his kills VERY close to the enemy and often would open fire on several men at once (in game turns, they would be throwing Dodge attempts like MAD). All with a basic Mosin-Nagant rifle with no scope. Now that's a character.

Just thought it was a fun history fact to know

Also, to actually contribute something, my group just changes the wording on some actions, like for dodge its simply "negate an attack for each degree" and for something like Swift Attack "for every two degrees after the first, score an extra attack" so for three degrees that's 2 attacks. Not sure if that's how it was intended but that's what it felt like to me.

If single attack/all out attack is not opposed skill test it won't do a thing in games that take place at high level. You can easily have 70-80% chance of dodging one shoot/one attack and some people can pump this to 100% or more. Even if you hit someone with that lascannon and he would probably die there is also force field like iron halo 50% negation. In higher lvles only good build is automatic weapon/balanced weapon. So I think I would stick to my opposed tests and chance for every action to take place

coolzyg said:

coolzyg said:

That's why you don't try to shoot Eldar Harlequins with Melta Weapons, or snipe them when they see you. It's about using the right weapon in the right circumstances.

With opposed Dodge on single shots, the only situation when it's not advantageous to use the highest damage single shot weapon you can access is when the enemy has a solid force field save. Which prunes about 10 layers of complexity from the metagame and discourages tactical choices in favor of sticking to your heavy hitting gun and spamming it like there's no tomorrow.

@Reverend mort

Uh, about those force fields:

The Force Field triggers off of each independently resolved hit received by a character. So, in the case of Full Auto Burst for example, a Battle-Brother scores two degrees of success for a total of three hits, hitting his adversary in the Leg, Leg, and Body (according to the Multiple Hits table). This adversary has a Force Field, so each of these three hits will get a separate roll from the Force Field to see if it is cancelled. If the weapon has the Storm quality, it simply does double the hits, so in this example the Battle-Brother will instead hit his adversary six times, hitting him in the Leg, Leg, Body, Arm, Head, and Body. The adversary will then get six separate rolls on his Force Field, one for each separate hit.

The answer I got from Andrew Fischer some time ago. It was for Deathwatch, but I don't think that matters.

Morangias said:

Single shot weapons incapable of semi-auto comes in exactly two flavors: Weapons meant to be used from hiding, or weapons meant to be used against tanks and terminator armor.

Three flavours, technically. Some just suck (as they are supposed to).

As for the force fields, I also think this may be a conscious change rather than an oversight. An all-or-nothing field ties in nicely with the reduction of rolls during combat.

Reverend mort said:

I just checked field rules in both DW and BC and they are word-for-word identical, copy-pasted if you prefer. So it's safe to assume the clarification stands as well.

Morangias said:

Not really. Just because someone got lazy with some copy pasta does not mean one can interpret them to be identical. They're both part of a larger ruleset, which is now noticeably different.

That said, there's really nothing to say one way or another. Regardless I find the idea of slanting field save resolutions, which can not be bypassed through cunning or stealth, in the favor of full-auto a bad move. Primarily because it creates a lot of weird interactions within both how certain fields work and because it adds more DoS counting to damage resolution, which slows down play and amounts to having to deal with 2 separate dodge rolls, where one apparently follows different rules concerning certain weapon qualities, and THEN moving on to actual damage resolution, all while possibly having to keep track of which locations the remaining shots hit if the character has uneven armor distribution or goes into critical.

Way. Too. Much. WORK.

One field save negates one attack. That's the fastest, fairest, easiest and most worthwhile solution I can think of. But if they don't, then yes, single shot weapons do suffer a bit at higher levels of play.

I would stick to force field negating hits not all attack because game is less deadly that way when somebody pumps at you 3 bolts you can survive if your force field would block one or two shots but if you are unlucky even one semi auto is deadly. Of course it's more realistic but its't not much fun to burn infamy like crazy.

About opposed attacks with one shot weapon you said enough and I can agree with it (even tho I will stick with my opposed tests). But bigger problem for me is all out attack if somebody would use this attack with huge bonus +30 will probably hit but his opponent can easily dodge it and then kill him because of no dodge. So all out attack is almost useless

About opposed attacks with one shot weapon you said enough and I can agree with it (even tho I will stick with my opposed tests). But bigger problem for me is all out attack if somebody would use this attack with huge bonus +30 will probably hit but his opponent can easily dodge it and then kill him because of no dodge. So all out attack is almost useless

...if you use it for the wrong job. If you all-out an Eldar Harlequin or Screaming Banshee, that's exactly the picture of the lumbering berserker evaded and eviscerated by the agile Eldar. On the other hand side, if you attach a Feint to the All-Out, the Eldar is suddenly very much in trouble.

Cifer said:

Alas, you cannot actually attach a Feint to All-Out, barring magic such as Daemon Weapons, since All-Out is a full action and Feint only works until the end of the turn on which you use it.

All-Out is still good for heavy hitters if their team manages to deprive the enemy of their Reactions. Well, and for Killing Strike, when you simply have enough of this "agile dodger" bull.

@Morangias

Ah. That makes sense, then, as the options sound like they should be mutually exclusive. I just assumed that All-Out would have been made a modifier that can be attached to any attack.

So... either use All-Out against something that can't evade very well or just attack with a single strike and a feint beforehand if you're up against fracking eldar.

Admittedly, All-Out Attack isn't that hot an action. It's mostly useful as a prerequisite for Killing Strike, and moderately useful for when the enemy is somehow incapable of avoiding you and you don't want to risk wasting that shot. All in all, one of the most circumstantial actions you can take, and I've seen entire campaigns go by without it being used. Gets somewhat better with Furious Assault, though.

Considering one can get a +20 bonus to an attack with single attack and half action aim: Yeah, it's... situational. Pretty good with Furious Assault, though.

Yeah, two hits with Great Chainsword, both at +30, can really ruin one's day.

Don't forget hammer blow on those two hits as well.

Nimas said:

Oh, right... suddenly, I'm reminded of this .

Yeah, with Furious Assault and Hammer Blow both, it gets quite decent. Pretty good even if you throw in Killing Strike, but that's just against the biggest nasties. The annoying thing is, it takes about as much exp to make this action worthwhile as it takes to dual-wield without penalties... Gotta try building some enemies this way, see how they fare compared to the more vanilla builds my team prefers.

Morangias said:

Remember, you can use All-Out Attack on the charge, so Berserk Charge, Furious Assault, Hammer Blow, Killing Strike and Thunder Charge basically let you plough through a swarm of lesser enemies in order to hit the big guy in the middle. Swap out Thunder Charge for a Jump Pack and the Raptor talent and you can mess up all but the toughest big monsters in one charge. The best part is, nothing about it is in any way hindered by a weapon being Unwieldy (you're not going to parry anyway, and you're not trying to use Lightning Attack).

This works better with Astartes than with mortals, however.