My group is new to the game and we are having a discussion of what happens to your Heavy Weapon when you requisition another one.

Example #1 - A Devastator starts with a free Heavy Bolter. He pays the requisition points for a Missile Launcher. Does the Missile Launcher replace the Heavy Bolter, or can he now hand the Heavy Bolter to another member of the Kill-Team and use the Missile Launcher instead?

Example #2 - A Tactical Marine starts with a Bolter. He requisitions a Storm Bolter. What happens to the original Bolter? The example of this on page 139 of the Core Rulebook uses the words "Gideon’s player decides to Requisition a storm bolter (20 Requisition) to use instead of his bolt gun". This seems pretty clear to me that the requisition is replacing the original weapon not in addition to it. However, I can't find an actual rule that states this.

aristodeimos said:

Ex.1: or he can carry both around somehow and use either as the situation dictates. Any of those is viable. A character with signature or specialty wargear always has access to that gear unless they choose not to use it.

Ex. 2: it's "instead of" if the player chooses to leave the bolter behind. He could bring both if he wanted to. The example uses really bad phrasing and the rules also plainly say that specialty-issued and signature wargear is always available to the character (barring of course some very specific plot-based situation). And examples also never control over actual rules.

Example 1: Requisition does not take your standard equipment into account, and to give someone 'bonus' req because of their class, to me, seems sketchy. Allowing him to give it to another player while he carries a plasma gun essentially gives the team 20 more req for the mission, which is more points than if the GM added an additional Veteran Primary objective.

It also seems sketchy because the heavy bolter is pretty much the only weapon I've seen players try to do this with, and it's because outside of the Force Sword it's the most expensive and powerful bit of default kit you can have.

It also, to me, goes against the character- that Heavy Bolter is his heavy bolter and was given to him by his Chapter. He maintains it. He takes care of it. He is responsible for it. This is true even if it is not Signature Wargear. To simply lend it out to another Brother for a mission seems...odd to me (in-mission actions might play out differently). He could certainly try to carry both, but that would be a trick in and of itself. And there is no way I'd let him have backpack ammo supplies for two heavy weapons at the same time.

Example 2: In this case I'd let the character have both- the standard boltgun is just standard issue to most marines, and it's the weapons they brought from home. Same as with the HB- if he wants to carry both he can. Again though I'd make sure to query the player about where he's storing the extra weapons and ammo (I track that type of stuff in my games, not everyone will).

Charmander said:

That depends on how you rule doling out req. If req is handed out in equal amounts to all the PCs, but with the option to 'pool req' as suggested RAW, then there's no 'bonus req' issue; there's no difference Dev taking PlasmaCan and swapping HB to someone else, or Dev keeping HB and someone else buying the plasgun.

It's fiddly, and 'feels' like a cheat, and is certainly against the spirit of the setting to dismissively chuck around personal weapons, "this is my rifle, there are others like it but this one is mine," etc... Any field-expedient swappsies is fair enough, but I suppose I'd frown on it during mission prep because it can start to become a long term issue when SWG begins creating multiple 'spares'.

In our game swapping weapons is legitimate but this is to offset our houserule that you can't carry more than 1 Heavy Weapon or 2 Basic Weapons (but only 1 can benefit from the Quick Draw Talent) and an additional 3 Meele Weapons or 3 Pistols or a mix of the last two on a mission.

I think it's more appropriate to swap weapons for a Kill-Team than running around with a HB a Backpack, 3 ammo-boxes, a Multi-Melta and 3 melta Canisters. A SM could carry even more but this would be to bulky and should get a penalty to Agility and so it's easier to assume SM carry only enough weapons to not affect their combat performance. And as you might have noticed we play by the rule of three, so no unlimited ammo.

Yes, it's all a feeling, there is nothing I know of in RAW that states you can or cannot swap out and have a big weapon party.

I use the req pool, but to me "I have a Heavy Bolter and a Plasma Cannon" is different than "I have a Plasma Cannon, and gave my Heavy Bolter to Tom over there" primarily because in combat you can shoot the Heavy Bolter OR the Plasma Cannon, not both. Add the spirit of the setting and the fact that I've only seen players try this with the Heavy Bolter...what's the saying, if a rule creates an option that everyone would use, it's probably an exploit? HB is much more tolerable via the errata weapons rules, but it's still a beast and very much earned its req cost.

In addition, to me, the req system is really just crunch added to the fluffly bit that would say 'here are your mission objectives, you know what you would need to equipe yourselves with in order to get a job of this magnitude accomplished.' To take more would be effectively dishonorable- what, you don't have faith in your and your brothers abilities to get that job done? This doesn't 'feel' like it's pushing any envelopes when you have low req items like bolt pistols and grenades, but suddenly you jump from something being 5 req to 20, and it feels wrong.

I can see your point. And specialty/ signature wargear falls Ina different place to me than, say, requisitioning a melta and letting a squadmate shoot it because it's functionally the same as putting the req in the community pool and them just taking it.

Ex. In the current mission the Techmarine took a lascannon and has used it to decent effect against krootox. But if they have a special sniper moment he plans to hand it to the devastator to take the shot since the dev's BS is better and he has Mighty Shot. I don't really have a problem with this. It'd be different if, say, the apothecary gave his exceptional storm bolter (signature wargear) to someone for the whole mission.

Kshatriya said:

And this works, crunch and fluff wise to me. Swapping weapons in the heat of a battle because you know someone is good with it (or needs it to survive, tossing the sword to the guy who just lost his in melee, very over the top cinematic) seems okay. But swapping pre-mission just feels wierd.

Yeah if someone wants a Heavy Bolter, they request it, period. You are playing Astartes, not Shadowrun. You don't play tricks with your superiors to gain an advantage. If you haven't been assigned/handed over a weapon, you don't use it unless special circumstances call for it. When push comes to shove, Marines are no-holds-barred, we-do- whatever -it-takes-to-win. But not unless it is really necessary. To act otherwise would be dishonourable and faithless.

Alex

I really don't see a situation where giving something you requisition over to a Brother comes up pre-mission unless there is a houserule preventing Requisition sharing or getting rid of a community requisition pool.

Otherwise, there's no functional difference between "I requisition this melta with my spare Req and give it to the Tacmarine" and "I have spare Req and give it to the community pool, and the Tacmarine uses it to requisition a melta" unless, of course, you have more Renown or something and get an Exceptional or Master weapon where he could only get a normal-quality, which is of course shenanigans since Renown is character-specific.

It's only where each character's Req is his and his alone and cannot be shared where "I requisition the melta and give it to my Brother" becomes a balance issue, but at that point you're operating under non-default goalposts anyway.

Kshatriya said:

As with relics it is a questioned who becomes the gear handed-out; he's responsible for the gear, he mustn't anger the machine spirit. You can pass requisition to a battle-brother but you cannot request an item and then pass it on. Likewise if you don't have a vehicle you normally don't request more than you can carry and pass that to a battle-brother.

The procdure is this: everybody requests gear so that they are properly outfitted for the mission. This is their gear and they carry it with them. If they'd like additional gear for themselves but can't carry it - tough. Leave something at home. If the kill-team needs additional gear to complete the mission, that can be requested too (or it gets assigned) and the team then distributes the burden/honour of carrying it among themselves (read: the team leader decides who gets to carry what).

And if the Team Leader or the Watch Captain (=GM) object to some load-out, it's not going to happen.

Alex

Page 208 of the Core Rulebook:

"CARRYING, LIFTING, AND PUSHING OBJECTS: Under normal circumstances, characters in Deathwatch do not need to precisely calculate how much they can carry. Common sense can serve as a guide for most purposes. In general, most characters can reasonably carry one main weapon (such as a boltgun, lasgun, or flamer), plus one or two secondary weapons (such as pistols or melee weapons), plus a few clips of extra ammo and several pieces of miscellaneous equipment in a backpack, satchel, or similar container."

I read to mean that if you have a Heavy Weapon, you are not carrying a backup Basic Weapon. If you buy another Heavy Weapon, you are not carrying your old Heavy Weapon.

On page 139 of the Core Rulebook, there is an example of a Devastator that "upgrades" his Heavy Bolter to a Lascannon. There is no mention of him getting
a requisition refund for the Heavy Bolter. It also doesn't mention being able to hand the Heavy Bolter to another member of the team. In the same example, a Tactical Marine "decides to Requisition a storm bolter (20 Requisition) to use *instead* of his bolt gun." The wording of both examples definitely implies
that you are trading in one weapon for the other.

Those of us that play the miniatures game are very familiar with this concept.

aristodeimos said:

You can of course read it thusly, but the example is only that, and not definitive on point. A Tacmarine who requisitons a heavy flamer still has his Specialty-issue boltgun, because the actual rule on Specialty-issue gear says "In addition to his power armour, a Battle-Brother always has access to the essentials of his Speciality without the need to Requisition them," emphasis mine, and right below that it talks about all the Specialty essentials, e.g. a bolter for a Tacmarine, a force sword for a librarian, etc. So I cannot read in the notion that a Tacmarine gives up "the essentials of his chapter," to-wit the bolter, if he decides to carry a heavy flamer around.

Add in the fact that an SM has a normal carry load of like 1200+ kg and the carry limit is pretty pointless in most circumstances; the only real limitation is common sense, which varies from person to person. Can a Devastator theoretically carry a heavy bolter in one hand with its top-handle and a heavy flamer in the other? IMO, sure, as both those things will add up to total weight less than his carry limit. But he's only getting 1 backpack ammo supply total, and to shoot the heavy bolter he has to set the flamer down (or vice versa). However I as a GM might say "no, that's not feasible for you to carry all that effectively" in which case the player might turn his heavy flamer back in and give his leftover Requisition to a squadmate to take it instead, which would be kosher.

aristodeimos said:

Again, these are examples, and unfortunately bad ones. Of course the Dev wouldn't get Req back for not taking his heavy bolter; he doesn't pay Req for it in the first place as it's free (Specialty-issued).

But the rules don't say that a Tacmarine outright can't requisition a storm bolter to carry in one hand while he carries his Specialty-issue bolter in the other, or he carries his storm bolter to fight Hordes but his regualr bolter for other enemies.

That the example makes a point to say he leaves his bolter behind doesn't make it a bright-line rule, it seems to make it a character choice, which is OK but still not a rule, especially as none of the actual bright-line rules about Requisition say it's a trade-in. The wording of "instead" is likewise unfortunately ambiguous. Instead for what duration? You could say "instead of the boltgun for the mission" or "instead of using the boltgun in his right hand" and he shifts it to his left. Or even "instead of in certain situations during the mission, given the storm bolter's greater rate of fire while he will use the bolter in less-dangerous instances." Of course I'm reading in interpretations, just as you are, but none of them is completely implausible. That's why I find the examples bad and not worth trusting over the bright-line rules: they're just bad and ambiguous and create debates like this =)

Examples aside, the bright-line rules seem to say that one can requisition more stuff as long as you have enough Req to spend on it, subject to the GM's whims about how much stuff you can reasonably carry yourself. That's it.

I'm familiar with how the wargame works and I play it albeit infrequently. Weapon-swapping is a balance point in the wargame for a specific reason - so all your Long Fangs can't Lascannon one turn and heavy bolter the next and melta on the third; if you want mixed capabilities, you have to outfit each unit differently.

Deathwatch, however, isn't a wargame, it's an RPG, and none of the rules (and examples are not rules; at best they're well-done applications of rules and at worse they misapply the rules and confuse everyone) say that additional weapons requisitoned at the start of a mission always outright replace Standard Issue or Specialty-issue wargear. If they clearly said that it would be another story, but they don't.

I read somewhere in the rules that there is no hook or strap to carry a heavy weapon for the SM. They would have to drop one of them as a free action to use the other (or so I believe).

I cannot find anything on damaging weapons by dropping them, though. I would think that a SM wouldn't want to drop a Missile Launcher for fear of said damage though. What are your thoughts on this?

IoM gear seems to be pretty sturdy and built to last - designed so you can bury it in a fetid swamp for 1000 years, pull it out, field strip it, and it works good as new. That kind of logic, to me, is the only way you can have 10,000-year-old warships that have never had their guts completely clean since they were first built but ultimately work as if they're new. So in general I think that Imperial weaponry and vehicles are designed to endure the realities of fighting endless war against mind-breaking enemies and still be usable even after being discarded as the user ran for dear life.

Additionally, there's not a lot of Sunder rules in this game aside from power weapons (which is both good and bad - good so weapons can't just get hosed and bad because I think it's a valid tactic to attack your enemy's gun) and weapons/armor don't strictly have hit points (unlike in D&D). A few weapons like the Corroded Falchion have break chances and like I said there's the "parrying a power weapon" rule, but aside from those, any damage to a weapon would be caused by a critical effect or jam where the round exploded, GM fiat that an in-game situation made a weapon unusable, or the damage would be purely cosmetic. Hence why I don't think that dropping a weapon should really do anything to it unless it's definitely called out to be a very fragile thing.

If you have a vehicle though, you can leave one heavy weapon in the vehicle.

Alex

I can't see carrying two heavy weapons onto a mission as being feasible. How would you manage ladders? Rappelling? River crossing? Hth combat against Greenskins without some Grot getting its claws on an Astartes ML and causing an after-action-report that demands honourable suicide?

Even by base game mechanics it's lousy; dropping the ML takes a Free Action, but Readying the HB takes a Half Action as it's too large to be Quick Drawn. Without some modification (such as Suspensors, Hellfire Shells) the Readied HB can't be fired with the remaining Half Action. Bad news if a dozen 'Stealers are charging the KT. You'll have to drop the HB as well and pull a blade/pistol. Better hope there isn't a quick fingered Hybrid around...

ak-73 said:

Something I just noticed:

Page 138 says, "A Squad may choose to pool their Requisition Points for a communal item." If you Requisition a communal flamer or melta or something, that rules flies in the face of the notion of "you requisitioned it so it's your responsibility and yours alone." Seems like one Brother COULD outright Requisition something for another, so long as the requisitioning Brother and the receiving Brother had the same Renown. I'm not sure though.

Probably possible by RAW but I'm not going to handle it that way. Even a communal item needs to have someone take responsibility for it. If noone does, it falls by default on the Team Leader. Maybe the Techmarine. Maybe the pilot or designated driver.

This is especially relevant if there are marines of different renown rank. Those of lower rank couldn't even get the item without those of higher rank, especially if there is only one marine of higher rank. Sure they can request Barrage Plasma Gun. But it has the name of the one marine who can request it linked to it. If it gets lost or damaged, he's to blame.

With vehicles it might be a bit different but again the driver/pilot, the Techmarine and Team Leader carry special responsibility, depending on what happens.

Alex

As far as using one Marine's reknown over another to requisition something fancier, I would rule that in two ways. One, you as the Marine would be impressed with the notion that this weapon is exclusive to you, almost over and above the aforementioned combat pragmatism. This isn't just a shiny gun, this is a relic, like that old rifle given to 'you' by your grandfather. Two, as GM, the armourer shouldn't hand out high reknown stuff willy nilly. In most cases, he's also a Marine, and should have that same reverence for relics.

That, however, is only for the purposes of stuff that is high reknown because it's old and valuable. High end weaponry, say like a missile launcher, should also be carefully regulated. Just like the wisdom regarding other special weapons, if you check out a lascannon for no good reason, then that's one less lascannon in stores when another team might desperately need it. But, if the armourer (GM) approves the requisition, then that weapon is effectively the property of the Marine who requed it for the duration of the mission, and is free to apply the idea of combat pragmatism.

I've played both sides of the issue, and I've never taken away items that they are equipped with by default. I have made them choose what they can carry, but that's about it. And when I played it, my Dev requested a missile launcher because he foresaw the assignment potentially needing it. The profile of the mission, however, was such that I could afford to bring and store both, as we were issued with a Rhino as well. So I was allowed to basically store one weapon when I wasn't using it, safe in the Rhino. Note, it's my interpretation that few characters in the Imperium, and pretty much no Marine would casually toss a weapon away and leave it.

PS. Though we were briefed on one mission, we ended up being dumped on a Tau world to conduct guerilla warfare as a result of an emergency drop. This turned out to be an object lesson for us, as I was the only one who packed their gear in a kit locker beforehand, so in the mad scramble to get out, I was the lucky one who got to use the full extent of what I requed. It also ended up that the team had a little extra gear since I had requed Deathwatch Scout Armour and the missile launcher. The moral of the story is that never trust that you'll be able to browse the ship stores on your way out, have your kit packed and ready as soon as you leave Erioch.

To answer OP:

1. I would be very hesistant to allow a player to hand their character's personal gear over to anyone else pre-mission. In a desperate situation where weapons have run out of ammo and chainswords have been ruined by power weapons, then swapping weapons isn't a bad idea.

2. The marine can leave the bolter back in Erioch or on the ship. If he has access to a vehicle he can leave gear there but that isn't always going to be available. The last DW session I was in, we had to leave the combat bikes behind and climb.

I'm very much in favour of DW characters having justifiable amounts of gear. Whatever the weight carry tables say, space marine weapons are incredibly heavy and bulky. Carrying multiples of even basic weapons is usually restricted to special wargear limited to chapter masters and chapter elites (e.g. Marneus Calgar, Sanguinary Guard). If a player wants a second heavy weapon, it's coming in a vehicle or not at all.