Hey, guys. Dumb question, but I want to make sure I'm doing this right. According to the rule book, firing on full or semi-auto creates additional hits (up to the RoF) for each degree of success. Now, the question is, if a bolter scores a hit, and 3 degrees of success (total 4 hits), do I take the damage roll and multiply it to give the total damage to be applied to the target? The core rulebook never clarifies. This is how we've been doing it for the sake of expediting combat. Thanks in advance.

I'm pretty sure it's rolled separately.

You roll each hit separately, apply mods from Weapon, ammo, talents etc to each, then subtract targets Armour (modified by pen) and Toughness Bonus to each hit.

Which becomes a pain in the ass when you need to do it for lots of hits. Especially if they are multiple-die and/or Tearing rolls.

Which is why I made this handy web-tool to do it for me

Well, parts of it. It doesn't subtract the targets T and AP, but it will let your gun bunnies quickly roll damage for their high RoF weapons. (red numbers indicate possible Righteous Fury, ie a 10 rolled on the damage die)

Darth Smeg said:

Exactly the reason we're streamlining it by taking the damage roll and multiplying it by the number of hits. Saves a lot of time, and the math all comes out the same, give or take.

Except the target looses anywhere between 1/2 and 9/10s of its damage reduction...

or more if you're using RoF 10+

herichimo said:

Multiply the AP of the locations hit by the number of hits. Fixed.

Math is so wrong if u multiply the ap... Do it separetly.

Some damage can be reduced to 0, and a single hit with 10+ damage will hurt cohesion too. And usualy a long burst will hit 2-3 different location.

Sadly u canot be lazy here.

Actually, I just stumbled across the chart on the Full Auto entry in the skill section last night, that has a chart on it for subsequent hits. Gonna make sure we use that.

Yeah, but that table is only for the hit locations. Which, about 95% of the time are meaningless as most opponents have the same armour on all locations.

Honestly, full auto is no worse than a "full attack" in a 3.5 or pathfinder game from a character with a high BAB. In fact, since you only roll the attack once (and maybe again for RF), there are really fewer rolls in this system.

I would hesitate to multiply the first roll, as that can result in pitiful output (or dangerous), and greatly reduces the chance for RF.

If you do multiply, make sure you do account for AP properly.

If you simply multiply the rolled damage for the first hit by number of hits you will have a VERY large (and unpredictable) damage spread.

The first (and only) damage die you roll will be extremely important, and if you roll very low or very high on this roll the total will be improbably high or low.

Example, you hit your target with 5 bullets, each causing 1d10+5. On average these hits will cause 10-11 wounds each, for an average total of 50-55.

Some of those hits will cause more, some less. You may roll a 10, and/or a 1. No biggie, the laws of large numbers means it all evens out in the end. Rolling several dice results in a normal distribution (a bell curve).

On the other hand, rolling just 1 die gives a flat distribution curve. The chance of rolling a 10 is just as high as rolling a 1 or a 5. But if you DO roll a 10, the 5-hit example above results in 5 hits all scoring 15, for a total of 75. This will have a 10% chance of happening in your system, but only a 1 in 10^5 (0,001 %) in the first situation.

This will cause some serious imbalance with other weapons, and will make things like Tearing Auto weapons (all bolters) out-damage pretty much everything.

Darth Smeg is right. The game isn't balanced for that kind of flat distribution. The randomizing element of rolling each hit separately keeps damage from getting ludicrous. There's also the fact that it mucks with Righteous Fury. To be honest, if I was one of your players and you proposed the roll one and multiply route, I'd be annoyed that you were taking away four possible chances for Righteous Fury. And in that multiplication method, what happens when that single roll comes up 10? Do they only score Righteous Fury the once? Is each hit a Righteous Fury? I don't know about the rest of the GMs on the board, but I've seen my Kill-Team's Devastator score three Righteous Furies on a seven-shot hit from his Heavy Bolter. Using Smeg's example of five shots, having five 1 in 10 shots is a lot better than having one 1 in 10 shot to deal extra damage.