Ok, I get that degrees of success with ranged weapons on semi- or full-auto indicate addition hits up to the ROF. However, do melee attacks that have degrees of success score additional hits? I've scoured the rulebook, and found nothing that says one way or the other.

Short Answer: no.

Long Answer: the most common way to hit someone more than once in melee is to use swift/lightning attack, two weapons, or a combination of these. in DW each is an individual attack roll and is parried/dodged with seperate reactions. Degrees of success in melee only matter for the minimum roll on the damage die. (p.245)

Also worth noting that in the newest game (Black Crusade) they did some major mechanic changes to make semi/full-auto and swift/lightning attack work the same with some changes to both. These changes have already been covered in other posts here.

Right, that's what I was thinking. We've played one game, and and after a couple of combats, we've adopted some house rules to speed up combat. We roll the attacks, then roll damage once, then multiply the damage times the number of hits. Next, we establish the hit locations, and work out the pen/armor deductions based on the highest armor value of areas hit (for example if a marine was hit on the chest, leg and arm, all pen/armor reduction would be against the chest's AV of 10) IE- A bolter scores 3 hits on a marine, and rolls damage once (let's say 10 dmg). Three hit locations are rolled. The damage is multiplied by 3, for 30 total damage. The marine's armor absorbs 30pts (10 armor value x 3 hits), but with a pen of 5 on the bolter rounds, that is reduced to 5 points per hit, meaning that the armor absorbs 15pts, so 15 damage gets through and is applied to wounds. Any subsequent crits are randomized against the affected areas.

Just remember to take the toughnes bonus off the damage as well. Most of the time you could probably get away with just adding the TB onto your AP for most locations on a space marine and keeping it simple. it gets harder with the bad guys where your pen is likely to be more that the armour for a good number of them.

You don't usualy need to roll seperately for hit location. the standard rule in the book is reverse the to hit roll. So if you roll a 39 and hit, you hit them in the (93) Left Leg. There is a little chart for where multiple hits go from things like full auto on p.239.

Hope that helps.

It should be mentioned that even in Black Crusade you need the Swift Attack/Lightning Attack Talents to do more than one meele Attack. In fact the Black Crusade rules make it harder to score additional hits because this is tied to the Degree of Success while in DH/DW/RT you only need the talents and get a fixed number of additional attacks.

Only PC with very high WS can score more hits than with the old rules, which is quiet realistic but nerfs down Meele Combat for the average PC.

And it has been mentioned somewhere before that you do not need the talent to use two weapons, but the penalties for going without make it rather unlikely to be very effective.

On the BC note. I have only seen the assault marine do better since we adopted the BC rules. I can see how it could be a problem for the non-marine character types though. But then if your WS isn't that good you won't actualy be hitting too many times even with seperate rolls.

Nathiel said:

Somewhat to the contrary, two weapon combat is effective against huge hordes where the size penalty offsets the -20 to each attack penalty. Or against huge master-tiers but you usually don't want to be in combat with them.

Alex

BiG_Weasel said:

The one exception to what others have said is that against a horde, as per RAW (unless I've missed a piece of errata) for every two degrees of success you get on your attack you score an additional hit on the horde.

You would get these extra hits vs. hordes on each roll with DW swift/lightning attack and two weapon fighting. (and it has been clarified in the BC forums that those stack with the hits from swift/lightning attack.)

I actually have kind of an issue with this. I'm GMing my first DW game (after doing DH for a coiuple of years).

It seems that the Assault Marine (who has Death is Joy as his armour history) is just a little too scary in Horde combat. With the +30 minmum size bonus for hittibg a Horde (that seems to be the minimum... ?) and Swift Attack he's regularly doing 6-10 Maghnitue damage per round. It doesn't seem right that he should be outdoing the heavy bolter. Am I doing something wrong, or is he intended to be that brutal?

BTW as written, the extra Mag damage for Death is Joy doesn't seem to actually require you to do damage. Is this right?

While we're at it, can Hordes All-Out Attack, doi Guarded maneuver, etc.? It seems like they should, but nothing is specifically mentioned (although the fact that they can use Furious Assault heavily implies it).

EDIT: whoops, I hope this thread isn't too old.