As it stands, the Astartes Weapon Specialization talent is a bit weak. No lower than -30 for a given weapon type? That sounds really good, until you realise how rarely that will be useful considering the sheer number of bonuses a space marine is likely to stack on their weapons. Full auto and sights for ranged, charging and hatred for melee to name a few examples. And it costs 1500xp, 1000xp for a tactical marine. Frankly, for the xp there are far better talents or attribute bonuses to pick up.

Thus I propose to add this line to the talent to make it somewhat more useful:

"On a successful attack with the chosen weapon type, the character may add an additional degree of success."

It slightly raises damage and increases the number of hits. What do you all think?

My main issue with this talent is not that it's to weak but it's silly.

What will happen is someone has the talent?

Example1: It is raining, the enemy is far away and running from cover to cover with his hard target talent.
So as the modifier is already -30 and can't become worse I'll just do a called shot to his head and do that shooting blindly from full cover exposing only my right arm. Why take the chance that he shoots back and hits me?

Example2: So there is that chaos tank coming at us through the ruins and the top hatch is open so the tank commander can see better. I'll take one of my grenades and throw it into the tank through the partly blocked hatch. What you say, it's impossible? But why my modifier can't be worse than -30.

I could go on adding examples.

So all in all the talent is absolutely useless because under normal circumstances it does nothing und when it would it gets too silly for the grimdark 40k.

I could live with a character being so skilled they can do insane shots and get away with it. But the line between "just that good" and "laughably ridiculous" can be pretty thin.

Any opinion on my proposed change? Would it work better as an outright replacement for the talent?

I think it helps, but I still wouldn't pay more than 600 xp for it.

Mind you, I wouldn't pay more than 200 for it before.

It already slightly raises damage and increases the number of hits, assuming that there are greater than -30% penalties in play.

Those extra 30% will give you 3 more degrees of success per hit, which translates into greater minimum damage, +1d10 with an Accurate weapon, an extra hit with a semi-auto burst, and 3 extra hits with a full auto burst.

Not bad.

PS. I think that's maximum -30% in penalties, not a maximum -30%.

One possible interpretation as well is that maybe you're supposed to add up negative penalties and positive bonuses up seperately, and then add the modifiers together on the final role. If this talent caps all negative penalties, before adding in bonuses, I could see some fairly positive effects. As was mentioned though, it gets rather silly in that a character can pretty much make a called, blind shot at extreme range, and only suffer a -30 (but oh wait, I get a +20 from aiming, and +10 from signature wargear)

KommissarK said:

That's how I interpret it. It's not a maximum of -30%, it's a maximum of -30% in modifiers. I see your silly point.

Then again, a character with deadeye shot and marksman (or whatever they're called) can make a called shot at extreme range and take no penalty.