Would it be possible to give Weapons that already are Reliable another effect for being of Good Quality?

This didn't bother me too much in the other games, but here, the lasgun is the iconic weapon of the guard. There are multiple ways to improve it in the beginning (spend regiment points or be a Weapons Specialist and choose the Lasgun) and indeed, the Vostroyans and Cadians start with Good Quality lasguns. And for all of them, it essentially means "Yeah, it looks nicer, but you've just spent your points on something entirely worthless".

As a remedy, I'd propose either eliminating Jams entirely (though that is more of a symbolic gesture), adding a point of Penetration or increasing range by a small percentage.

If you bring back the multiple power settings for all las-weapons, than I'd say that a good quality lasgun is either still Reliable or isn't Unreliable when fired on maximal setting, and I think reducing the action to clear a Jam to a half action wouldn't be a bad thing too.

Increasing range also seems like a good idea, and I agree it would definitely have to be percentage based.

That just leaves the bow, but I don't really see how we could improve that without modifying the base stats of the weapon.

How about Proven? It's a quality that IMO fits very nicely with the idea of a good craftsmanship. Since damage rolls aren't so much about the random nature of weapons as they are about how good you land your blow, it makes sense for a well constructed weapon that just fits so well in your hand to always land those hits just a tad bit more precisely.

I also believe that a differing bonus for those good-quality weapons that already have "Reliable" is needed. Even something as simple as a point of penetration or additional point of damage would go a long way towards rectifying this inconsistency, which has existed since Dark Heresy.

I gotta say I agree.

"Good Craftsmanship Lasgun" is just a longer way of saying "Lasgun" as it stands.

Here's how I would handle it.

Reliabilty comes with a scale, improving quality from normal to good goes on step up, improving from good to best goes another step up.

Reliabilty:

Unreliable
Normal
Reliable
Never Jams or Overheats
Something else

All you need to figure out now is what to put at that last place and it really comes down to GM preference.

A few sugestions:

• Additional Customisation
• Customisations cannot destroy the weapon (by failing on the test with 2 DoF)
• Proven (2, 3, something)
• +1 Damage
• +1 Pen
• Bonus to install Customisation in this weapon
• +X to Social Skill tests with "Gunlovers" (Adeptus Mechanicus, Munitorum and other organisations that would appriciate a gun of such quality).

Maybe a BS bonus?

Or you could half aim as a half action, to represent truly finely made guns. Accuracy is kind of a big bench mark on the quality of a gun. Or customizations without the drawbacks.

For Best Quality, I mean.

For simplicity, why not have it do exactly the same as melee weapons?

The rules for melee weapon quality work fine, and there's nothing about them which isn't transferrable.

The rules for melee weapon craftsmanship are extremely powerful and balanced for the reduced number of attacks typically made by close-quarter combatants (non-Lightning Attack, close range requirements, and so on). Also, melee weapons do not jam and there are no provisions made for such in their craftsmanship rules. Including a clause stating "Ranged weapons that already have the Reliable quality instead add 1 to their Penetration/Damage" to the paragraph explaining Good Craftsmanship for ranged weapons is just as simple and less likely to result in dramatic alterations of combat.

tbh i cant see a way of changing this without overly boosting guardsmen out of proportions. Maybe just make the weapon slightly lighter. It is of greater emphasis that a guardsmans gear doesnt exceed much more than 40kg (or however much it is) in this game.

One idea i had a while ago was to make the weapon balanced. So that it could be used to block or parry like a staff. But perhaps this is best left as a weapon upgrade.

1c33m4k3r said:

I don't think that part of the reasoning holds up anymore. Remember, when weapon craftsmanship rules were first penned (and they didn't get too significant alterations between different game, with the exception of Deathwatch - but then Black Crusade returned them to their previous state), melee was handled by several separate attack rolls while semi- and full-auto shooting gave considerable bonuses to the attack roll rather than penalties. Back then, a rule that gave firearms even greater chance of scoring multiple hits, and with a damage bonus on top of that, would have been overwhelmingly powerful and further cemented Full Auto as the only logical combat choice.

Right now, multiple melee and ranged attacks are both handled identically, and using either decreases your chance of hitting at all rather than increasing it. That easily puts melee on par with ranged. In fact, I'd say that disregarding the potential tactical advantage of nor standing face to face with your enemy, melee is much more powerful now. With ranged weapons, the maximum damage and the number of hits are both limited by the weapon itself, with only several talents being able to enhance upon either. With melee weapons, the number of hits is only capped by your WS and the damage is only capped by your Strength, and you get the same amount of Talents to improve upon either - and then, you can stack even higher thanks to weapon quality bonuses.

Also note, that the major changes in rules introduced in BC and continued in OW drastically limit the necessity of weapon jams existing. In the previous rules, it was relatively easy to stack modifiers on your Full-Auto burst until you reached or exceeded 100 as a target number of your roll, at which point it had to be balanced with an extra element of risk involved, or else we could have forgone the attack rolls altogether. Notice that before BC, melee attacks didn't have any kind of auto-miss results on the attack roll - that's because even with quality modifiers, it was harder to "cap out" the roll with a melee weapon than with a full-auto ranged weapon, and because ultimately melee weapons could never generate as many hits as full-auto weapons could. All in all, these considerations feel slightly outdated to me.

Morangias said:

I like this idea, I hadn't even considered proven. I still say a base AP of 1 should be a given, it is a freakin laser beam after all. Chainmail should not stop lasers.

Proven doesn't do that much on low-dice weapons - consider the simple lasgun, dealing 1D10+3 damage. If you slap a Proven (3) on it, that's 6 points of damage if Proven kicks in. Does anything apart from gretchin and their ilk have less than six points of damage reduction? Proven kicks on multiple-dice weapons like the lascannon where every single one of 5 dice could come up on a 1 or 2 and be upgraded while the other 4 dice roll high enough to make the whole shot count.

Reminds me of Weapon Tech:

Weapon Tech can get you better mileage from your rickety, unstable, highly advanced plasma pistol.

Weapon Tech can improve your Melta's output considerably, for one or maybe two shots at most.

Weapon Tech can make a power-field better, Boost a Needle Rifle, even add to a generic though uncommon piece of imperial tech that launches cans with nets in them.

But while certain solid projectile weapons take it just fine, like the assault gauntlet, its apparently impossible to get the same benefits to a laser.

Since DH came out I've just given any Good-crafted weapon that already has Reliable the Accurate quality. It's simple and easy. If it already has both those I just say it is Good-crafted to start with, like how Deathwatch weapons are already well above common, your weapon gets Good-crafted for free and you can take Best-crafred at a reduced cost. I think I'll carry that over cause it's easy.

And a note on how I handle Best-crafted range weapons is to give them +5 to BS and +1 Damage. which is closer to what Melee weapons get.

Cifer said:

I think part of the point is that it should provide a 'useful' bonus but not an overwhelmingly powerful one. To be sure a weapon with multiple dice will always benefit from a higher average since they have higher chances of rolling lower than normal, but just because multi-dice weapons get more ‘bang for their buck’ with this effect doesn’t mean that its not very useful for those that might want a more consistent average damage.

Though you are right about Proven (3) not being enough for these single-dice weapons, but lets up to Proven (4) or even Proven (5), since these weapons rely more on a single dice roll having a higher Proven should be plenty fair. Is making your normally ‘average’ damage the new ‘minimal’’ seem all that bad a bonus? Sometimes its better to deal more damage consistently than to deal more damage every so often, a lasgun with Proven (4) for example will deal a minimal of 7 damage per shot which isn’t too shabby since its almost the ‘average damage’ of the weapon (Roll of 5, for 8 points of damage).

While it’s a bit of an oversimplification I’d say the average target has a Armour of 3 and a Toughness Bonus of 3 for a total of 6 damage resistance against this target the above-mentioned Proven (4) lasgun will ‘always’ deal 1 point of damage per hit. Its not going to turn the lasgun or other weapons into miniature Lascannons but its still a useful trait.

And if your going up against creatures with very high damage resistance (space marines, Ork Warlords, etc.) the lasgun isn’t going to cut it no matter what you do. You are going to need a bigger gun…and maybe a bigger boat.

Just looking through the armour I find it amusing that the only weapon with the Proven quality is the Lascannon. Perhaps this alterative for Good/Best Quality weapons may make it more common to see.