ok one of my players has come to me stating he wants to play a sniper.. no problem i said sig wargear a stalker bolter add a scope and voila!

no he meant he wants to play a "true sniper" so i point out the ultima sniper rifle in rights..

so i ask what it is he wants to do... i get told he wants to use a bolt version of the exitus sniper rifle designed for marines with a clip of each of the special ammos.... now not wanting to jump up and down on creativity here i read the rules in ascention for them and ouch i think is the word id use especially if you make it a bolt weapon and make it marine sized what are peoples thoughts on this should it be aloowed or should i just give him a stylised stalker that has the right look?

I'd say no. He has two options, stalker pattern or one from RoB.

Make him Raven Guard for the stealth options and go that route. But Im hesitant giving any player gear above what you are supposed to get at starting rank 1.

A "True Sniper" in marine parlance would be scout armor and a needle rifle.

The Exitus is a unique weapon system that only Vindicare Temple Assasins use, are hand made for each individual, and are basically unique relic level weapons.

A space marine is never purely about stealth, not in the same sense a mortal might be. They are still genetically-engineered super-soldiers and their methods of warfare and wargear reflect that. Between stalker boltguns. the ultima and needle rifles there are plenty of ranged armanents. Add camo-cloaks, stummers and scout carapace to space marine combat training and you have a scarily lethal stealthy warrior who can still endure and dish out massive damage. Raven Guard and Wolf Scouts just up the ante further.

As for exitus rifles, they are limited to two groups:

1. Vindicare temple assassins.

2. Someone who has stolen from the first group and will be hunted down by the same.

Real Men snipe with lascannons anyway.

AluminiumWolf said:

I almost high-fived my screen when I read that.

AluminiumWolf said:

This is an instant win.

lord inquisitor revan darksoul said:

Yeah.... No....

Like you, I'm generally inclined to let players do what they find fun, but I also at least try to adhere to the fluff for most things. For starters, technology is not something that mankind really fully understands, so making a modified exitus rifle that shoots bolt ammo sounds a bit above what most techpriests can or would do. There's also the question of exactly how much of the gun would need to be "modified." Standard bolt ammo is more or less a rocket-propelled grenade in a slightly more compact casing (emphasis on slightly) whereas an exitus rifle (at least in my imagination) fires something more akin to a real-world rifle bullet. Modifying an exitus rifle to fire bolt ammo would involve replacing the whole barrel, magazine, firing chamber, etc. You'd probably want a sturdier stock on the back. It would basically be an entirely different gun. Certainly it would be different enough to negate any special rules properties of an exitus rifle.

And, as others have mentioned, all this is ignoring the obvious consequences of trying to use a weapon which would have to have been stolen from a galaxy-renouned group of highly efficient assassins.

Making a stylized stalker that looks like an exitus rifle with a bigger barrel is far more plausible, and probably more realistic when you consider the effects of firing an entirely different (and much larger) type of ammunition. Contrary to what some gamers might like to believe, after-market modifications won't allow you to ignore the laws of physics and make your weapon work like the thing it used to be.

PS: As an aside, if I were the GM in this game, I would be more than willing to entertain backstory fluff about how the player worked with a group of Vindicaires once upon a time and they honoured him by giving him his own exitus rifle. It could even make for a pretty cool flashback scene to run one day. Provided he was asking to use an actual exitus rifle, that is. Unmodified, by the book exitus rifle. I'm fine with one or the other, but trying use "customized parts" as an excuse to get the best of both worlds just strikes me as a tad too twinky.

If he wants an Exitus, he can play a Vindicare. That's the only way I'd let it happen.

AluminiumWolf said:

I am forced to agree with this comment, even though i acknowledge that scouts would use either the stalker bolter or the one in rights of battle.

Gaire said:

Only if Temple Assassin is nerfed!

As to having an Exitus Rifle...not just no but Throne no. Go seek penance from the Chaplains, heretic. If he wants to play a sniper, you can't go wrong with the stalker + scout armor + devastator or just playing a Wolf Scout.

Vindicare Assassins are arguably more rare than Astartes and they each typically only get one of each special ammo per mission...and he wants full clips? Screw that noise.

OOC, slam a book into your powergaming player's face if he brings this up again.

lord inquisitor revan darksoul said:

The Ultima is insane at the best of times. If he's really REALLY insistant, and you want to play along, let him take specialist bolter ammo that affects the Ultima - but charge him out the proverbial, requisition wise.

Or, tell him to man up and start using an Autocannon. It's solid shot, like an Exitus. It can be fired in different modes (I select... ALL OF THE BULLETS!). In the 40k rules it woulds most things on a 2+. They're practically the same weapon.

Weapons of the assassin temple are made to work with their owner and no one else. Grip the weapon against the will of the assassin and your hand will exploded and or the weapon will jam and or explosed also or even worse.

Temple assassin are state of the art product of the imperium and have weapons even the mighty astartes would dream about. Weapons made one at a time with love and for the used of one man only.

Adeptus astartes are maybhe the knights of the imperium, they have wonderfull weapons but weapons made in large numbers, easy to fix and clean, robust enough to be use as club by SM. They have no need for weapon so techological than even their techmarines couldn't fix it.

And if your player want to play assassin let him play it along your kill team. When heavy bullet rain will come it will become difficult for him to stay alive against endless hordes. But if played well he can even survive.

AluminiumWolf said:

Boo Frakken Yah! Fire and move cubscout, fire and move.

AluminiumWolf said:

Wow, talk bout a headshot! Wait, there's nothing left...

professor_kylan said:

Why even that? The player can learn to take "no" for an answer. If he insists and whines, drop him. If he wants a sniper rifle bolter, the answer is to take a Stalker, not to jerry-rig some special snowflake Ultima that fires bolts just to please a player.

Thebigjul said:

Ascension and DW is not a good mix...part of that is teh flaws of Ascension itself and part is how much each character brings to the table at chargen - Ascended acolytes have a lot more noncombat training, which skews game challenges; things that would be hard for an Astartes would be easy for an Assassin who had plenty of time to learn, say, Disguise and other skills that Astartes rarely use. Vindicare are way overpowered compared to Astartes at a baseline (ahem. TEMPLE ASSASSIN), without even mentioning all the pre-Ascension DH Assassin talents and skills they'll bring in, which will radically change the balance of the game.

If the player is desperate for a better sniper rifle, then there's a Relic called Serpent's Bite listed in The Jericho Reach , within the sidebar "Within the Armouries of Andronicus". It isn't, however, available to starting characters - you need to have a Renown Rank of Hero to requisition it.

Kshatriya said:

Please take note of the qualifier "and you want to play along". If it was my game, I'd tell them they are never getting an Exitus rifle unless they personally save the lives of the High Lords of Terra, unify the Inquisition into one glorious monolithic structure, and personally see to the return of the Primarchs. At which point they may ask for one politely. That being said - it;'s not my game, I don't know exactly how their group wants to run the fluff. As a result, I'm offering suggestions on HOW to run it in the system without it being overly broken.

thanks for the feed back guys i think the descision has been made

one long barreled stalker, scout armour, and camo cloak

get thee to some signiture wargear either deal with it or pick something else

although sniping with a lascannon...... i feel this may become a nemisis

Yeah, my Raven Guard Techmarine is a sniper too - he makes do with the Stalker Bolter, and until he decides to tech-heresy something else together and be shunned that's what he's going to stick with.

Apart from when he gets his Servitor Follower to lascannon snipe

You get to snipe once with a lascannon - and immediately give away your position while you one-shot a single enemy. A straight beam of brilliant energy will mark your position pretty clearly so high-tailing it out of there or just continuing to fire while exposed become the options.

In addition to the purely rules/setting objections that have been voiced, at least 50% of the combat in my games takes place at close quarters. A "true sniper" runs the risk of being overwhelmed in melee, if I'm interpreting the phrase properly.

Dude, it's a servitor. He uses it as a decoy to mask his actual Stalkering.

Fair enough but I'm talking in generalities. That, and if the servitor goes down and the headshots continue, someone will twig it.

DailyDose said:

I would assume that Space Marines are skilled in all forms of war, yet snipers prefer one. Just like an assault Marines prefer melee but can still pick up a bolter to purge the xeno.