I have found some time to read HA and I'm really frustrated to see that the most interesting entries (for me) seem to be messed up.

Nathan already told us in a DW thread that he based the new Bolters on the BC weapon stats, but does this mean the old old stats from RT and ITS are replaced as well and if so why use all the NPC's in HA still the old stats. Is this intended so that NPC's always outgun the PC's or is this another case of poor editing?

The new Exotic Weapons are quiet interesting but why does the Eldar Chainsword doesn't fall under the Exotic Meele Class while the Eldar Biting Blade does?

There are some new Weapon upgrades but the most useful seems to be the most broken too. I guess the Micro-Upgrade was intended to be an advancement of Compact but as Compact halfs the clip size for Micro it stays the same. Is this an errata and the clip size should be reduced to One-quarter like the range and the weight or is this offset by the increased rarity of the ammuniton?

This could be quite powerful, if you use the Micro-Upgrade on a Relic-Boltgun and turn it into Relic-Bolt-Pistol which still has a whopping 1D10+7 X Damage and a Clip Size of an impressive 30 Bolts. This seems to be a little over the top. Would this Archeotech-Bolt-Pistol still has Strength Bonus requirement of 6, after all it's not bulky anymore it's on a micro scale and would it count as a Heavy Weapon in this case?

As always I'm a little bit disappointed when I see how much effort the authors put into the fun part (spinning stories) while neglecting the more important stats. I pay for a RPG-book so that I can have fun playing the game and not that some authors have fun writing it.

As the description notes, the munitions are made smaller as well, so the magazine stays the same. Additionally, the ammo is actually two steps harder to find! While this might not matter much in the short term, something like your relic boltgun would start needing some hefty acquisition checks in a hurry to get the bolts needed to fire it, and even the description notes that you would already be making regular upkeep tests for it.

As for other weapons, the minus 2 to damage would start to deter cheesing it up. Micro is meant to be used as a backup weapon and possibly even in conjunction with that concealed weapon armor upgrade, not as an explorer's primary piece of equipment.

As far as the Eldar chainsword being under regular chainswords, it functions almost identically to an Imperial one. The activation switch might be in a different spot and it certainly doesn't gout smoke or make a noisy roar, but the technique is about the same I imagine. That's why it's there, I think.

unnownrelic said:

Doubt that, eldar powerswords aren't much different either and they're still exotic. A fact which holds true for more then one exotic weapon.

I tend to look for a reason before keeping something locked away in the Exotic bracket. It's an XP sink if you need to buy more than one Talent to become proficient with your shiny gear, and that's not something that appeals to me even as a GM. Therefore, if it's clearly exotic I'll leave it as is, but if there's a case for it falling under one of the regular categories I'll call it a house rule.

Specifically, when it comes to things like Eldar weapons, I can see the use of wraithbone in the construction being a barrier to a human making best use of it, possibly even opposing the wielder. Perhaps you might want to reduce the cost of the advance to become proficient if the character has a related Talent?

None of this is official errata.

Kain McDogal said:

Actually, I based exactly one Bolter on the Black Crusade stats - the Relic/Archaeotech Bolter. The damage values for mortal Bolters in Black Crusade is 1d10+5, the same as in Rogue Trader.

The other Bolters are unique patterns, and deliberately do not match standard Bolter rates of fire, and the Footfall Pattern Bolt Weapons intentionally deal lower-than-normal damage for bolters, given that they're badly-made knock-offs rather than true examples of the munitionsmith's craft.

Kain McDogal said:

Final changes and editing are beyond my knowledge and control, it should be remembered.

The Biting Blade is an Exarch's weapon, a relic even by the standards of the Eldar. It's a tool requiring patience and dedication to master in its own right.

Kain McDogal said:

The intent is that the increased rarity of the ammunition is the offset here - Compact weapon ammunition has to be specially made, and has to be specifically obtained.

Kain McDogal said:

Firstly, speaking as a GM, I would only permit such a weapon to be taken under extreme and specific circumstances. Such a weapon would have to be constructed from scratch, and making a brand new one is impossible (it's a design that originates with the Reunification of Terra... arguably, it's older than even the most venerable of Astartes Bolters, and any given Relic Bolter may have been wielded by one of the Thunder Warriors who fought in the Emperor's Name before the Great Crusade - it isn't a relic of ancient times if you just had it made), so you'd have to find and obtain a miniaturised version of an ancient and venerable weapon produced more than ten millennia ago. Such an item would be legendary in the extreme...

Secondly, I would count the potent kick of a Micro-Relic-Bolter as still requiring the Strength Bonus requirement (it is, at that point, comparable to an Astartes Bolt Pistol) and it'd count as a Basic Weapon in the hands of anyone without SB6 trying to wield it. It follows on from the way Legion Weapons work in mortal hands in Black Crusade, and works well here.

Thirdly, Relic Bolters already employ rare ammunition - they can't be loaded with conventional Bolter rounds - and given that they're comparable to Astartes-standard munitions, actually obtaining Micro-scaled Relic Bolter ammo is essentially impossible (combining the two sets of rules, an Upkeep Test for a Near-Unique item is needed regularly for Relic Bolters, and all Tests to obtain ammunition for Micro-weapons is two steps more difficult... which pushes that Upkeep Test to obtain relic bolter ammo past Unique and off the bottom of the chart).

Thanks for the unofficial answers.

I wouldn't have allowed a micronized Relic-Bolter in my game either but it made a perfect example to combine all questions regarding the Micro Upgrade in one package.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

O.O Whoa. Maybe it's better used as an endgame weapon when the groups PF is really high?

Funny you should mention the "micro" upgrade. I think it is massively overpowered. For example, consider a "micro" storm bolter. Compare the stats of that to basically any other pistol you can find. See what I mean?

Cheers,

- V.

I don't know about you, but when one of my players tries to acquire a gun that fires ammunition that is UNIQUE (Remember, ammunition for Micro-weaponry is two steps higher than the weapon itself), he's not going to get an unlimited amount of said ammunition. By all means, he can have a pistol-sized Storm Bolter. It's going to be up to him to decide when to use the scant dozen magazines of bolts that the Lathes' foremost artisans were capable of manufacturing in a year's dedicated work.

hm... a wrist-mounted Micro Storm Bolter with the one single magazine of tailor-made miniature Organgrinder rounds ever produced in the history of mankind... could be a nice backup weapon for REAL emergencies...

Now you're thinking with profit factor!

Vandegraffe said:

Therefore I would still argue to forego the increased rarity of the ammunition and reduce the clip size to 1/4. In case of the SB you would get an extremly short-ranged, 16 shot roomsweeper, which means 2 Full-Auto Bursts with Storm. Enough to clear an enclosed place of all human-like targets but useless for real combat!

Errant said:

+1

Sure, it's an extremely powerful weapon... which you can shoot 4-5 times and probably never again in your life. A single magazine for Unique Ammunition is a -70 Acquisition Test, you are not going to use it all the time. That and the fact that such ammunition is more difficult to get than Atomics for your ship. =P

Plus the GM could ask for Upkeet Tests for the Micro-Storm Bolter once in a while to represent the high-mantenance and unique components such weapon needs.

Kain McDogal said:

Except it's the increased rarity of ammunition that is supposed to be one of the checks and balances here.

Having a clip size that's 1/4 what it would be standard isn't really a problem if you have whole crates of spare ammunition handy on your ship (and several magazines stuffed in your pockets).

EDIT: If people have a problem with their cool micro-weapon's ammo being almost impossible to find, then maybe they should choose a more common, and less twinktastic, weapon to go for then?

Kain McDogal said:

So your answer is to make it a crap copy of Compact?

Errant said:

No, I would make it an advancement of Compact!

But let's leave the Micro-Upgrade aside and look at the Zaythan Warblade vs Eldar Biting Blade. Both are two-handed exotic Chain Weapons, but the Warblade has three times the Penetration, an additional D10 damage and a Power Field but it's availibility is 4 steps lower.

Sure, the biting blade deals 2 additional damage for every two success but does this justify the increased availibility? And this is only one more example I don't want to compare the Ceres Bolt Carbine with the basic Locke Boltgun, because this must be a joke. Does this sound like a balanced armoury? Of course there are a lot of priceless sporting-guns in the real world who are much less effective than their combat-related counterparts, but you won't take them to a warzone.

There are a lot of useful basics in the HA-Armoury but most of the time I get the feeling that the developers put no second thought into it. "Hey I've got a cool idea and I MUST write it down no matter how it will interfere with existing rules. I can easily find enough excuses later. The most important thing is it has a fancy name and I can put as much flavor in it as possible. Who needs working rulesets when he can read a nice story."

Maybe I do.

Sadly this is a trend which became worse with every further FFG-Publication. Why is it so difficult to coordinate different writers ? DP9 already did this in the 90's and succeeded although electronic publishing was still in it's early stage. If Only War, which will be a very hardware oriented book, takes the same lazy approach this will be the last product I will ever buy from FFG!

I am not seeing a massive issue with the Micro weapon myself.Two grades is not a minor issue unless you have a massive PF.And if you do have that massive PF, why not have super cool one of a kind toys?

Also on the swords, and Elder chain sword may not be exsotic but it is near unique. And the warblade is very rare vs the elder blade being Unique. The system uses rarety as a factor you keep ignoring.

Except that his complaint is that the zaythian blade is better than the Eldar equivalent, and is far more common. Personally I'd have the availability of the zaythian blade only apply on Zayth itself, if the players had established trading ties with a landship, otherwise making it unavailable at most ports.

Opps, sorry I misread that then.

Kain McDogal said:

Which wasn't exactly the design intent.

Kain McDogal said:

Rarity is not purely based on function. Rarity is partially determined by narrative factors. Xenos weapons, for example, are inherently rarer than equivalent human-made weapons for no other reason than because they're Xenos weapons. The Biting Blade is listed as unique because it's an Eldar relic, fulfilling the dual criteria of being both of alien origin and extremely rare in its own right.

Plus, the weapon appears to have been heavily toned down since I wrote my manuscript - the Biting Blade was a lot nastier when I statted it up. This is a factor beyond my control as the person who wrote the armoury, because once I've handed in my manuscript I have no more contact with it until the book is released.

Kain McDogal said:

Again, narrative is a factor - the weapons themselves aren't commonplace, and consequently they aren't as readily available as perhaps you might like. In this case, the Bolt Carbine is a lightweight, more reliable version of a Bolter - it's not made in particularly large numbers (otherwise we'd see it more - as it stands, I've encountered a single example of a Bolt Carbine in the background in my two decades perusing the Warhammer 40,000 universe), but it isn't pointless. A deliberate consideration of this armoury before I began work on it was that it was to include a variety of lesser-known, rarer or more unusual items than those found in the Core Rulebook and Into the Storm. This will inevitably include a number of sub-par items, devices of poor worth or quality.

To reiterate - Availability is not solely determined by the potency or utility of the item .

I'm sorry if you dislike the notion, but that's just the way it is. What you see as a mistake was

Kain McDogal said:

You're not a Rogue Trader - prestige and appearances are as valuable as stopping power in many cases.

Kain McDogal said:

Maybe I approach things differently than you do. I don't personally regard "game balance" as being the be-all-and-end-all of game design for RPGs, and I'm unwilling to pursue the fleeting and ephemeral notion of "game balance" at the expense of the narrative of the setting.

Thanks for the reply! Out of curiosity, would it be possible for you to tell us your original stats for the biting blade?

N0-1_H3r3 said:

When these things are that important for this kind of RPG why aren't there any rules like +10 to charm or something like that?

Even if I have to repeat myself over and over again, as a GM I can spin my own Stories. What I need are hard rules, which have been game tested and proved to work in concert with already existing rules. This is the kind of work I don't have the time to do myself and I'm willing to pay for. If it comes to narrative there are a lot of novels out there, W40K and other SF/Fantasy, which are much cheaper than any RPG-publication.

Honestly, this thread is kinda starting to sound like the Dark Heresy one, where people are arguing about books having weapons that aren't better in every way than the last book...

Just putting that out there...

Blood Pact said:

It's not about better weapons it's about unbalancing for the sake of narrative content.

As a GM I really like the idea (this means the stats) of the Footfall Bolt Weapons. They could be useful when I will strip the Crew of ther own weapons and they have to aquire new equipment fast, but the Ceres Bolt Carbine has no justification, except for it was mentionend in some W40K fluff.

Why not give a carbine some carbine-related rules like the Zayth Auto-Carbine?

Of course Rogue Trader Equipment should also be about style but why are there no rules for this like in Cyberpunk?

But Nathan told me he is unwilling to do something like that probably because it's more work than cooking up some stories and maybe I'm UNWILLING to pay for this anymore!

In all honesty, i do see Kain's point, just as i do see Nathan's point. Both are arguing two different sides of a coin in my mind.

While i agree with Nathan that you shouldn't sacrifice everything for game-balance purposes, it shouldn't be so little either. There shouldn't be a conflict. Several of the very cool ideas (which often seem to originate with Nathan), just aren't playtested enough to my liking. I've pointed it out before: 40k needs a lot more playtesting before books hit the market. If i now read above that Nathan looses all contact once he's turned in his manuscript, i'm sorry but that's ridiculous. Even if he puts a ton of background info on everything he writes, it's still daft x1000 that you don't at least let the original author proofread what's become of the script he turned in. And i agree very strongly with Kain that there are far to many houserules needed for any GM who buys FFG 40k books. If the idea of the universe wasn't so strong, i wouldn't buy any of these books at all.

There's a lot of points where FFG could be doing better business. Unfortunately however: the only one of them who seems interested to respond is Nathan who seems to have very little say in the endproduct. I love that he replies and clarifies. But i hate how FFG treats the community which gives them their money.