So this issue recently came up in my Deathwatch game - the Tactical Marine opened fire on a Horde with his holy Bolter - and then proceeded to nearly wipe out the Horde in a single attack. Following is a description of the problem.

The Bolter, fired on Semi-Automatic, inflicts 3 hits.

Explosive Rounds, as per page 359 of the core rules, "count as having inflicted an additional hit"

Hellfire Rounds (pg 159), "add one additional point of damage to the Horde's Magnitude per hit"

The Storm of Iron talent doubles any damage dealt to a Horde's Magnitude.

Now, the Hellfire Rounds are pretty clear here - for every hit, you inflict another point of Magnitude damage. Storm of Iron is pretty clear, too - a simple doubling of total Magnitude damage. The question is the Explosive Rounds: do they count as inflicting one additional hit, period, or do they inflict an additional hit for every hit inflicted by the bolter? It would seem to me that they only inflict one extra hit, but my player doesn't see it this way. It might seem like nitpicking, but it makes a fairly big difference:

If it counts as one extra hit, period, then his total Magnitude damage is 16 (3 hits base + 1 (Explosive) x 2 (Hellfire Rounds) x 2 (Storm of Iron))

If it grants an additional hit for every hit inflicted by the bolter, his total Magnitude damage is 24 (3 hits base x 2 (Explosive) x 2 (Hellfire Rounds) x 2 (Storm of Iron))

From the Errata:

Damaging a Horde (page 359): The sentence “Weapons
that inflict Explosive Damage (X) gain a bonus against Hordes, and
count as having inflicted one additional Hit” should be changed
to “Weapons that inflict Explosive Damage (X) gain a bonus against
Hordes, and count as having inflicted one additional Hit per Attack
after all other Hits have been applied.”

Alex

the +1 from X type damage does not multiply by Storm of Iron/Hellfire Rounds I believe, also, the multipliers are additive, they don't stack (in other words, two 2x multipliers in this system turn into a 3x multiplier, not a 4x multiplier). I could be wrong on storm of iron, it might multiply the X damage. Pretty sure the wording on hellfire though is talking about the hits caused by the weapon, not the total mag damage the horde takes (so it ignores the +1 X damage).

So in the case of 3 hits, it is:

3 base hits + 3 Storm of iron hits (1 per base hit) + 3 hellfire hits (1 per base hit) +1 X damage hit (1 if the damage is X damage)

Yes, this is still quite a bit of horde damage. 3 Semi auto hits is quite a good attack roll, and to have hellfire/storm of iron indicates a particularly able marine. If this is causing mag 15 hordes to break, then I see no issue. Mag 15 represents a fairly small unit size, and it is well they should be terrified of such an individual.

KommissarK said:

Storm of Iron says: "When using a flamer or firing a Semi or Full Auto Burst against an enemy with the Horde trait, the Battle-Brother doubles any damage that he deals to the Horde’s Magnitude. For example, if the Battle-Brother’s attacks would reduce the Horde’s Magnitude by 5, this amount is doubled to 10."

Hellfire reads "When used against a Horde, Hellfire Rounds add one additional point of damage to the Horde’s Magnitude per hit."

The key word that throws me here is both abilities add *damge to magnitude* rather than extra hits. Keeping in mind that a horde in the open is nearly certainly going to take a mag damage per hit from a boltgun or less, however if behind cover each hit has to do more than toughness + armor. So if they're in a bunker, you have to do 37 or so damage + pen *per hit* to inflict a single mag of damage. Based on the descriptions of the abilities, they're supposed to add to successful wounds to the horde. In addition, it feels as though the intention is that they would only add horde mag damage on a successful wound (rather than saying 'well I hit 8 times, that's at least 8 mag damage even if I don't wound with any of them').

I'm personally torn between the method you have above (everything calculated as hits based off the original rolled to hit and seems pretty streamlined) and this:

Each base hit would have +1 from hellfire, take that total number and add a single one from explosive damage. So you get
3 base hits
+1 from Explosive
------------------------
4 hits
-------------------------
Roll Damage on 4 hits
-----------------------

Now comes the tricky part- do you multiply before or after applying hellfire? I'm conservative and hate my players, so I say after.

Multiply 4 mag damage (or whatever the roll allows) by 2 for storm of Iron
--------------------------
8 mag damage
+ 4 mag damage due to hellfire
--------------------------
Max 12 mag damage

If you swap out when the multiplication happens you can get up to 16. Now if you do this with a heavy bolter you're looking at more like 21 to 28 mag damage depending on when you do the multiplication.

Yuk

Assuming you have 3 hits that do damage...that is 3 hits for 1 mag damage each.

Hellfire adds 1 mag damage per hit, assuming you even do damage to the creature. Base damage goes up from 3 to 6.

X adds 1 mag damage per attack. So that is 7.

Storm of Iron Doubles overall damage per attack. For a grand total of 14 mag damage.

Bolters are the boss of BASIC marine weapons.

bobh said:

Explosive adds one additional hit per attack (after all other hits have been calculated), not mag damage, so you change the math and end up with 16 mag damage (assuming each hit wounds).

That's why I was saying when you apply the bonus from hellfire versus storm of iron it can make a difference, especially with things like storm bolters and heavy bolters (well, barring that hellfire sucks bad in a heavy bolter).

Charmander said:

That is what it suggests RAW, but it feels a little "Magic Bullet" to me for the Type (X) hit to generate further effects; like a fourth bolt round had mysteriously appeared and hit the target. We just treat the X hit to read as an extra point of MagDam instead of a 'hit', though still multiplied by SoI, so total MagDam of 14 as bobh said.

Charmander said:

Going by RAW you're doing it wrong, I'm afraid. Assuming all hits do wound, the process consists of 3 steps.

1. Calculate # of hits.
2. Translate hits into mag damage.
3. Calculate final mag damage.

So it's 3 hits + 1, translating into 4+4 points of mag damage, adjusted by SoI for 16.

But a Marine with SOI and Hellfire rounds should be able to do lots of damage to hordes. At that point in his career, he'll probably be faced with more than 1 mag 20 horde regularly. It's a normal ramping up process. No low rank marine has normally SOI (outside of some Deed perhaps).

Alex

PS Extra damage against hordes comes from additional damage or disruption due to the explosive nature of the bolts. Either more Termagants get killed or the explosive effect has a devastating effect on the enemy rebel squad's morale.

ak-73 said:

Right, assuming you mlutiply the mag damage from SOI after applying hellfire, which it heavily implies, if it does not state directly.

I do ultimately agree though, at the time you can buy Storm of Iron and have the req required to tote around some hellfire shells, there are (or should be) bigger fish to fry so to speak.

X is step 1, Hellfire is step 2, SOI is step 3. Unrelenting Devastation is also step 2, I think.

Alex

Received an official FFG response from Andy Fischer, outlined below:

"Below I have outlined an attack against a horde using the Storm Bolter as per your rules question. Each step in the outline has the total number of hits being dealt, the amount of magnitude damage per hit, and the total amount of magnitude damage being dealt. These numbers aren't final, and are just totaling the numers for that step to keep track of everything. One clarification, the Errata for Explosive damage will be having its wording changed slightly in Errata 1.2 to say "Weapons that inflict Explosive Damage (X) gain a bonus against Hordes, and count as having inflicted one additional point of damage to Horde's Magnitude per hit." So, keeping that in mind:

-Brother Zakadiel attacks a horde, scoring 3 hits with his Storm Bolter. – 3 hits – 1 damage each – total: 3 damage
-Because it is a Storm weapon, this is doubled to 6 hits. – 6 hits – 1 damage each – total: 6 damage
-Because the damage is Explosive Damage, each hit deals one additional point of damage. – 6 hits – 2 damage each – total: 12 damage
-Because Zakadiel is using Hellfire rounds, each hit deals another additional point of damage – 6 hits – 3 damage each – total: 18 damage
-Finally the Storm of IRon talent doubles all damage dealt to hordes. – 6 hits – 6 damage each – total: 36 damage

So finally, Brother Zakadiel's attack deals 36 damage to the magnitude of the Horde! His elite training and specialized gear have paid off with dramatic results!

I hope that summary and rules tweak help clarify how this all works. Thanks!
--
Andrew Fischer
RPG Producer
Fantasy Flight Games
[email protected]"

PrinceOfMadness said:

Hmmm, not sure I'm a fan of this new application of the explosive damage. Hordes already die in droves to my group of marines and I use the current errata's version of rate of fire. I'm not sure they need to be able to do double damage to hordes. I really don't feel like throwing multiple 100+ mag hordes against my crew to create a challenge. I know they're just speedbumps to the good stuff, but at a certain point it's not even worth rolling dice against them anymore when your crew can look at them crossly and force them to make a break check.

Yeah, please give PCs more buffs. Please, please.
Also players usually catch on quickly if hordes are only speed bumps and it turns easily into an old school D&D hack then. Fights against hordes need to be more tactical.

Alex

Plasmafest said:

Consider it to be damage from either overpenetration, or from organic shrapnel; as a target blown up by a bolt round sends bone shards flying at considerable speed in all directions. It can also be attributed to morale effects of seeing friends literally blown to pieces.

Wow... that 'official' reply is whack! Explosive weapons essentially doubling damage and stacking multipliers is pretty grim. I think I'll stick with:

Base damage, multiplied by all multipliers at once (which are added, not multiplied together) +1 for explosive + unrelenting dev.

It's a lot more reasonable to my mind, but still produces spectacular results.

While we're at it, please let's reinstate the original DW Righteous Fury rules. [Trollface]

Alex

Well, if FFG are telling us it's that way, I'm going back to having to either use a dozen 20 point hordes or one vast 300 pointer in order to vaguely challenge players...

Or I can stick my fingers in my ears and say 'lalalalalala'...

PrinceOfMadness said:

This can't be right. The book and errata clearly explain that X damage only causes one additional damage per attack, not per hit.

To requote the FFG response from above:

'One clarification, the Errata for Explosive damage will be having its wording changed slightly in Errata 1.2 to say "Weapons that inflict Explosive Damage (X) gain a bonus against Hordes, and count as having inflicted one additional point of damage to Horde's Magnitude per hit."'

Does that sound as silly to your ear as it does to mine?

Alex

Well, this looks like a response to the nerfed ROF of Bolters in the errata.

So Bolters are still not quite as lethal against big enemies since they hit less, but are actually better against Hordes than with the old ROFs.

I kinda like the way this is going, since long fightes against Hordes were never that exciting for me.

*Sound of a thousand of Deathwatch characters throwing everything except bolters out of the window again*

Bolters were nerfed to bring them into balance with everything else. This change completely undoes that against hordes.

Siranui said:

If this change becomes official, then yes, weapons with (X) would be the best choice against Hordes. Which I kinda like, a Storm-Bolter/Boltgun is then the best choice against a Horde of Orc-Boys but not quite as good against the Warboss standing behind them as other, more expensive weapons.

KommissarK said:

The +1 from X type damage is an extra hit not extra damage, so if that hit inflicts damage that damage should be doubled. It comes a step before Storm of Iron doubles everything (and an extra 1 damage isn't exactly massively unbalancing). Hellfire I am less sure of, as it adds an extra damage per hit (so would inflict even one Damage per hit even if the bolter failed to damage). I could see it being either way, as Storm of Iron does indeed say double all damage , but there is a general principle of stopping things exploding into silly numbers. Metal Storm, on the other hand, would certainly be doubled, as it again inflicts 2 hits for every successful hit. You would have to roll damage for both hits (if you are shooting things that are not auto damaged) and each hit that damaged would be doubled.

Just to the original poster. As others have said Explosive is +1 hit per attack . It is added onto the maximum 3 hits of the bolter (making 4, and a minimum of 2 if you hit with any bullets), not an additional hit for every hit .

OK... silly errata. +1 hit per attack was fine. It doesn't need even more buffing (doubling damage essentially). Why? Ach... so much recent stuff FFG have done that I don't agree with. It particularly doesn't make sense with bolters. The extra hit could be argued to be the morale effect of the hidous effects of bolt shells. Doubling the damage just doesn't make any sense.

And a Storm Bolter would do 4 damage per hit (barring failing to roll damage, and even then it would do 2 Damage)... erk. Storm doubles the number of hits, and each hit gets an additional damage. A full number of hits now gets a bonus 6 damage from explosive compared to 1 from the original wording. I am not sure whoever is considering this has thought this through... or listening to too many players who insist you have to play with 300+ strength hordes, rather than adapting to the new RoF by using smaller hordes.

Also realised that Storm Bolters with metal storm become even more absurd with the suggested errata. Each Hit becomes 2, With a blast 2 weapon, which translates into 4 hits per hit... absurd enough, but now it does another 4 Horde Damage on top... That is 24 Horde damage (barring failures on the damage rolls for half of that) before you even start worrying about what Storm of Iron does. That is compared to the original way which gave you 13 hits if you hit with all 3 rounds, which is nasty enough.

Okay, on second though it's probably not that stupid for a change. I must add to this that I have dismissed the new ROFs and using the new ROFs I can see why they would make that change: with the old rule you do only like 3-4 mag damage against a horde. With the new ruling you'd do more 4 to 6 mage damage with a Bolter.

So now that makes more sense. Well, I think they are digging themselves deeper into a hole. The new damages with the old ROF (except for the HB which needed the nerf) works just fine.

Alex

With the original RoF (and original X damage against Hordes rule) the maximum horde damage is only 5, only one more than the current version. Now, yes, you are far more likely to hit the maximum number of hits, due to it being full auto, but it isn't too much difference between the two. Ok, a basic bolter with normal ammunition is not too bad going from 2-4 horde damage to 2-6 (though I personally am very much keen on the "new" RoF, the lack of supressive fire aside), but it really looks like they haven't thought of the interaction with special ammunitions and the like. And also remember the "new" weapon stats are optional , so the new explosive rule is meant to work with the old stats (which are still treated as the official ones by all the Deathwatch books) as well (giving them 2-8 horde damage, rather than 2-5).