Okay, here goes. ItS has a military sniper rifle, the "Absolution", that should be able to drop most marks with one hit. But the gun has as much penetration as some backwater buckshot. Sure, the 'Accurate' rule can add lots of damage, but at least some Pen would have been nice.

On the other hand, there is the Ripper pistol, which has a better pen than a friggin plasma gun. Isn't that a tad much?

Man Stopper Rounds?

Santiago said:

Only apply to specific SP weapons, not bolters. Only special bolt ammo I can think of just adds damage against things with the Machine trait. And its incredibly rare.

Sorry, it seems I didn't make myself clear. My point is that a military sniper rifle should NOT have the same pen as a musket or a derringer. I know this can be fixed by special ammo, but even the gun's normal ammo should be superior to that of lesser guns.

(And BTW: The Absolution is neither a bolt weapon, nor would I use Manstoppers. Organgrinders or Lathe Bodyblowers are just way better.)

On the other hand, a Pen of 7 seems way over the top for a solid projectile weapon small enough to be classified as a pistol. Not even Heavy Bolters have that kind of penetration.

Both instances seem to me to be screwups and I'm wondering if there is an Errata or something for them.

eBarbarossa said:

Blame the tabletop stats then - the Ripper pistol has AP2, same as a Lascannon or Plasma weapon. It appears to be intentionally designed to pierce armor.

Astartes sniper rifle has 0 pen as well, due to the fact that it fires slivers of crystallised toxin. You're generally supposed to aim for the weak points in their armour, ie the head.

The Ripper pistol is a bit odd; prior to the FFG entry it was unique to Sly Marbo. The way I figure it the gun's not really anything special, it's the ammo that's the major aspect of it; perhaps increase the rarity of the ammunition by one step and/or have the player make an upkeep test regularly to keep a supply of the ammo in stock?

This was an issue a player of mine had as well - he wanted to play a sniper character, and being a bit newer to the 40k setting he was using a Barret Sniper Rifle, which can penetrate quite a bit of armor RL. Of course, sniper rifles on table top play out substantially different (4+ Wound, no AP or AP1 if you are using a unit like Pathfinders, if memory serves). What I ended up doing in his case was custom statting a long-las with hellgun penetration and reduced the clip size.

The other option I'd considered is adding a Pen bonus that goes with aiming on sniper style weapons - although Accurate as a quality really helps with the damage output, even against armored targets.

A final option would be to up the penetration substantially (maybe up into the 9-10 range) but class it as a heavy weapon that can't be fired unbraced (bulging biceps or not). I'd need to play with the balance on this one a bit more, as well as the last one, but the option we ended up going worked quite well for him until he 1) saw the stats on melta-guns and 2) realized a lot of our encounters took place at much shorter than sniper ranges. Of course, it helped in my case that I had a player who was very open with "let's try this, and if its broken I'm either going to try something else to improve it or gimp it drastically" as a way of helping him build out his character the way he wanted.

For sniper work there is the solo boltgun or how it's called from into the storm.

Boltgun damage and pen, tearing and accuate.

Been playing with a Long-las and I gotta say the lack of penetration is no issue. I still drop most targets in a single shot or two. To me Accurate is a better representation than just slapping Penetration onto the weapon because the additional damage from Accurate chews through both Armor AND Toughness. Consider that you see some huge, unarmored ork. It doesn't matter how high of penetration the rifle has, because it's negating armor the ork doesn't have and the effect is wasted. Accurate, on the other hand, helps relate the devastating blows that a sniper rifle can make in the hands of a skilled gunman regardless if the target is armored or not.

Just my two cents.

Just to expand on that:

Remember than a weapon's Pen is a special kind of damage that only works up to a maximum of their target's armour. It is flat out just worse than damage in almost all cases (all the ones I can think of anyway).

The sniper rifle works fine, as one of my players, who is an absolute killing machine with that exact weapon, will testify to.

The ripper pistol is something of an oddity with it's massive penetration (steady now), and although it's not explicitly stated, you could just count it's ammo as being exotic, thus making it harder to come by.

As a side note, I like the Barret .50 cal idea presented earlier and wanted to develop my own version of it (warning: not very much like an actual Barret):

Gunmetal Pattern "Final Rebuke" .50 Anti-Armour Rifle

Class: Heavy

Type: SP

Range: 400m

Damage: 2d10 Impact

Pen: 12

RoF: S/-/-

Clip: 5

Reload: Full

Special: Accurate, Recharge, Special*

Availability: Extremely Rare

*This weapon is considered a basic weapon for the purposes of applying upgrades that count as 'sights', with the exception of the Red Dot Sight. This weapon also does not gain the +10 bonus for firing at short range, and may not be loaded with unusual ammunition. The recharge quality represents the firer compensating for the massive recoil generated by the weapon, as well as operating the extremely heavy bolt action.

With the Ripper Pistol, I find it odd that a weapon that hyper-penetrates stil leaves toxins behind, but realism be damned. Our group's Arch-Miitant loves this beast!

Thaddux said:

There's one BIG problem with your reasoning, yes a barrett antimateriel rifle IS kind of unwieldy, but it has suprisingly LOW recoil, contrary to popular belief, because the barrel is designed like a damper (look it up)

Ok, 1st off.. a .50 sniper rifle is WAY too complex of a gun for the 41st Millennium. This is 40k where even the most basic of things we take for granted here in the now is considered Arechotech. Furthermore, this game is about flavor, not substance like stats and min/max. Kills me to see so many people concerned with game stats than with the flavor or spirit of the game. Most weapons in Rogue Trader all do the same amount of damage with a +/- a few points. Rogue Trader is kind of like Star Wars in the fact that its Space Opera more than it is Sci-fi.

Serve the Emporer today, you may be dead tomorrow…

Cpt. Harkonnen said:

Trying to tell others what the game is/should be about is always going to be a FAIL.

Cpt. Harkonnen said:

What are you on, and where can I get some? Gravity manipulation is a fairly common thing in the Imperium, relatively speaking, as are enhancements, bionics and the like that make dealing with recoil and the like much easier. The basic lasgun is an incredibly advanced weapon by our standards, and yet is considered incredibly basic by Imperial standards. Don't confuse their differing aesthetic and the fact that they're much less advanced than DaoT humanity with them being primitive by our standards, because there are far more ways they're not than ways they are.

My game has a RT who is well on his way to becoming an Arch-Heretek. He has high Int, Tech Use, and Trade (Armorer). One of his goals is to develop weapons and tactics to help the Imperium survive. One of the first things he designed/built for the ship's Arch Militant was a .50Cal sniper rifle. Since .50Cal is the round used by heavy machineguns, the .50Cal damage profile is based on the Heavy Stubber. While it is still a basic weapon, it is large enough to require bracing to fire without penalty (-30 unless braced). Bulging Biceps allows firing without bracing, similar to a heavy weapon. The weapon is superior to the long las or sniper rifle, but much heavier and more limited in deployment. The ammunition counts as heavy ammunition (it can share ammunition with heavy stubbers, although snipers tend to pick and choose rounds from ammo boxes to ensure they get the better rounds). At this point he has custom built a few, but is working on the manufacturing schematics that would allow for mass production. The weapon is usually used with Explosive (+3 Dam, counts as heavy ammunition) or Man Stoppers (+3 Pen). The weapon is well within the technology level that hive world regularly manufacture, so I don't see a problem with it.

Class Range ROF Damage Pen Clip Rld Special kg Rarity

Basic SP 150m S/-/- 1d10+5 I 3 5 Full Accurate, Needs Braced (-20) 15 Rare (based on complexity)

If I were the GM I'd say an STC pattern already exists for such a weapon. Essentially it's just a bolt-action rifle, scaled to .50 caliber and manufactured to fine tolerances. It should come with a scope as standard too.

I tend to require the players to aquire STCs and manufacturing patterns through aquisition or roleplay. There may be such an STC, but it isn't common (not published, and there are other sniper rifles published). I use the Inquisitor's handbook crafting rules for the most part, with components for an item being 2 degrees less rare than the final product if you have the appropriate Trade skill. Components are 1 degree less rare if you only have Tech Use. I also allow player to craft anything up to Rare without the STC/Manufacturing pattern. Of course the players have a best quality Laboratorium on their ship, so crafting is quite a bit easier for them.

I forgot to add that it has integral silencer and top rail to mount desired scope. The party Arch Militant has SP weapons as his specialty and uses either Explosive Tipped or Blessed ammo. With the explosive tipped it does 1d10+10 (Pen 3) damage in his hands.

WilliamAsher said:

That's not how the Arch-Militant ability is supposed to work. Appropriate choices include Basic, Flame, Heavy, Pistol, Melee, and Thrown.

WilliamAsher said:

In the Real World , silencers are useless on any projectile weapon with a supersonic velocity - for obvious reasons.

Cpt. Harkonnen said:

In a setting where caseless ammo gun that can easily swap between magazines (something that is hard to do today even), with all kinds of exotic ammo. They have laserguns, powered armor, giant mecha, starships, FTL, amazing efficiency and so much more.

Archeotech is simply put, AMAZING, it is efficient, durable and powerful. It outstrips our modern tech overall, the only area where modern day humans have better tech would be in computers, and in the 40k setting they outstripped us there too, even getting fully sentient. So they regressed in that area because of the risk of robotic uprisings and chaos infesting and corrupting their tech.

Besides, they have heavy stubbers (possibly around .50 cal) and autocannons (repeating powerful cannons that fire explosive ammo)

If a player wants a .50 Cal Sniper Rifle (for this example, let's take a heavy stubber, make it S/-/- and accurate with an appropiate sized magazine), what is the issue, it won't even be as good as the Angelus Bolt Carbine and the Sniper Bolter (both of which have great damage, more pen and tearing WITH accurate), so it hits weaker, will be big and heavy, obvious to see (but will have cheaper ammo). So why does it matter? It won't be a game breaker, just a more powerful hunting rifle and even harder to conceal

Cymbel said:

The heavy stubber is typically described and operated more like a .30 cal/7.62mm GPMG rather than a .50 cal HMG. As for autocannons, the fluff is that they have lost the technology to make explosive ammuntion for them and these are instead firing large solid projectiles which may range from .50 cal (but likely larger) up to 40mm depending on sources. I do find it a bit odd that there is no difference between the man-portable autocannon and the main gun of a Predator tank since it should be easy to have light autocannons and heavy autocannons (no, not battle cannons - those are considerably larger) differentiated in the rules.

In 40k, the realm of REEDICULOUS calibers, I don't think it is crazy to assume that a pintle mounted heavy machine gun on a tank that has ridiciously huge weapons (even the humble chimera) would be .50 cal. Even, for some reason, it isn't, so what? 40k has no problem with guns, let alone a simple bolt action 50 cal weapon.

Second, on the autocannon, I remember seeing somewhere that autocannons are not AS good as they used to be (they used to have even better explosives), but ONLY solid? You would have to bring some proof and citations, thankfully I have. From the Inquisitor's Handbook on Autocannons:

Autocannons use cased, explosive shells fired at a high rate to destroy their target.

I would rather not check every iteration of W40k RPG for the flavor text, but that example AND the extremely powerful damage (more like an exploding high velocity shell) seem to fit with the commonly held view that 40k autocannons are similar to modern day ones

The Heavy Stubber does too little damage to be a .50 cal, and it does roughly the same damage as an Armageddon Autogun, which is along the lines of a BAR or an M14. So the Heavy Stubber seems to be based off of an M60 or a Browning M1919, though its weight is far greater than it should be for a weapon of that class. Heavy Stubber is 35kg/77 lbs, Browning M2 .50 cal is 38kg/83 lbs, not including the tripod. By comparison, the M60 is 10.5kg/23 lbs.

Also, If I recall, the Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer says that the explosive autocannon shell has been lost and thus they are forced to rely on solid slugs. However, this is the same book that says Genestealer claws are blunt and puny and that a Guardsman should recite the "Litany of Stealth" while attempting to surprise-attack someone, so it should be taken with a grain of salt at best .

Even if they actually did lose the explosive autocannon shells (which I'm sure they haven't), they are still perfectly capable of making explosive shells for the assault cannon (see: Deathwatch, any given Space Marine codex) and a wide variety of explosive bolter shell.

Hmmm…

"Esteemed High Magos, I have, uh, ' discovered ' an ancient STC of explosive autocannon shells. I suggest we put them into production at once, in accordance with the blueprints I've… also discovered. I'm sorry, Beneficent One?… Uh, Y-Yes, of course it looks like the assault cannon shell! This is, um, a testament to the genius of the STC and the Machine God's design! If it works, then logically it would be best to pattern after it, r-right?"