antijoke_13 said:

That's what I did except I did Crippling (3) and heavy impact instead of proven… Seemed like 3 damage every round on more than a half action would yield more damage long run than an extra 1 damage on the initial roll.

My Characters Sniper Rifle-

Catachan S.M.L.A Short Magazine, Long-Barreled Armament - Though not the Astartes pattern of Sniper Rifle favored by Catachan Death World snipers this is often the weapon Marksman begin their training on. Stemming from an STC pattern dating back to the first settling of Catachan, a crashed scientific Explorator vessel, the S.M.L.A has witnessed the cultural evolution of the Catachan people and has always remained a relevant tool to survival. Families with strong ties to the sniper tradition are often the biggest proponents of such weapons, either passing down weapons or the knowledge of how to craft them to prospective pupils in their families, or equally as likely taking young Catachans with a penchant for shooting in their villages under their wings until they are inducted into the Guard. The furniture of this weapon is typically crafted from partially petrified Catachan Ash wood, though polymer designs do exist with reduced weights but they lack the simple Clobbering power of a stock-strike from the dense wood. A short-stroke bolt action allows the shooter to rapidly place rounds on target accurately while also allowing him to slowly eject brass casings to be collected by hand one at a time, minimizing the chance of light glinting from the ejected brass. These weapons are usually attached as a squad level special weapon because of the comparatively lighter weight to the Astartes pattern making it the preferred Marksman weapon by Catachan Scouts; something worth note is that Death World Snipers are rarely bothered by the extra weight, preferring to set up hours or even days in advance waiting for the perfect shot. Of course this difference in mentality has led to rivalries between the two dogmas… though neither can ever settle an argument as Scouts use total kills in a given battle as a benchmark whereas Snipers calculate skill by distance of the shot, claiming they could get as many kills as they had individual rounds if they had the benefit of being as close to the enemy as Scouts regularly are.

(Basic; 300m; S/-/-; 1 D10+4 I; Pen 3; Clip 15; Reload Full; Accurate, Crippling (3), Reliable)

<Magpie’s Customizations- Reinforced, Extended Barrel, Custom Grip, Modified Stock>

High Impact- Apply a +2 modifier to the weapon’s Damage when it is fired with the benefit of an Aim Action.

Sniper Rifle with Rare Model, Small Magazine, High Impact, Crippling x2

I'm necroing but...

there's nothing as fun as watching players talk about how to optimize characters using options from splatbooks. Your GMs would be furious if they good see this thread

Without using Pattern shenanigans from Hammer of the Emperor, for which mileage may vary, if you're using splatbooks from previous Campaigns such as Rogue Trader, there's a lot of things you can do.

If I were a sniper, I'd settle for the Long-Las, simply because ammunition is plentiful and easy to acquire. In a pinch, if push comes to shove, you can throw a Laspack into a fire to recharge it.

A Long-Las, using Overload (+2 Dmg/Pen), a Whisper-Bolt Discharger (-1 Dmg, but functions as a Silencer and conceals the beam), and a Overcharge Pack (+1 Dmg), loaded with a Hot-Shot Charge Pack (Sets Pen to 4, adds Tearing, adds +1 Dmg, and reduces Clip Size to 1) would end up with the following profile:

Long Las, Basic; Range 150m; S/–/–.

Damage: 1d10+6E Pen 6; Clip 1; Reload (Full).

Accurate, Tearing, Felling (4), Silenced, Unreliable.

4.5kg

Throw a Telescopic Sight onto that, and you're good to go.

However, if I were the GM, I'd argue that several of these would be mutually exclusive. You're applying an Overcharge Pack to something that can already Overcharge, for example. It just doesn't make any sense to me. It's like they came up with the Variable setting rules (why is this not a special quality?) but then copy-pasted the upgrades and ammunitions from older supplements.

Hot-Shot Charge Packs can be used by Hot-Shot Laspistols and Lasguns, which are really just Hellpistols and Hellguns. It's dual terminology and very.. un-neat.

Anyway, there are, however, compelling arguments to be made in favour of the Sniper Rifle, should you accept upgrades from additional supplements. Notable, a Sniper Rifle would allow you to use a much wider range of ammunition (Bleeder Rounds, Manstopper Rounds, Blessed Ammunition, Barbed Rounds, Inferno Shells, Tox Rounds, etc), and many good upgrades:

Melee Attachment (Counts as Spear).

Maglev Impeller (Range +10, Dmg +1. Reload +1 Full).

Silencer (Silences, but without -1 Damage).

Fire Selector (Allows you to switch between three clips at beginning of turn).

Red-Dot Laser Sight (Who needs a Telescopic Sight with a range of 210m? +10 BS).

A Sniper Rifle with the above upgrades, using Manstopper Rounds, would have the following profile:

Sniper Rifle, Basic; Range 210m; S/–/–.

Damage: 1d10+5I Pen 6; Clip 20(x3); Reload (2 Full).

Accurate, Reliable, Silenced, Counts as Spear in Melee.

+10 Ballistic Skill.

5kg

One way to (ab)use the Fire Selector is to simply load it all up with the same ammunition, effectively tripling clip capacity. Arguably, it is still more useful to actually load it up with different kinds of ammunition, to preserve versatility, but that's up to preference.

If you have considerable room, I would take the Long-Las. It's easier to upgrade to reach this pinnacle, and you will never run out of ammunition. On the other hand, you will have to haul a metric ton of Clips around, and every single time you choose, there's going to be one full round you won't be able to do anything.

In anything remotely resembling close quarters, the Sniper Rifle would be preferable. With a potential effective clip size of 60, those 2 Full rounds of reloading will never come up, but you will also have to haul chargepacks around (for the Maglev Impeller). It also maintains that sweet Reliable Special Quality, and +10BS from the Red-Dot Laser Sight will help with the Accurate Special Quality, and with an effective Range of 210m, so, so, sooooo many shots should count as Short Range.

Edit: The prospect of using Barbed Rounds and then Bleeder Rounds against a single target in the distance, to then sit there and pick off his friends with Manstopper Rounds is.. classic sniper cruelty.

Personally I'd take the Longlas - and did choose so for our regiment. Why?

Because:

• for most targets I'd be shooting at, damage from either is plenty and special ammo is a waste.
• for those few targets where they're actually liable to survive a well-aimed shot from a longlas, they will certainly have unnatural Toughness, so Felling (4) is +4 damage right there (and may even affect True Grit, not sure about this), which is pretty good, compared to even the best special ammo
• Energy Weapons tend to have more useful critical effects, like setting a target on fire, causing his ammo to explode. I've (ab)used this feature to set a sentinel on fire by turning the pilot into a torch, and made sure that bad-guy squaddies didn't just pick up that missile launcher when the wielder died - it blew up with him!
• None of the above are necessarily true against vehicles. But they are the heavy's job.

An average Guardsman will survive a well-aimed shot from a long las half the time actually.

3d10 = 16.5 average damage + 4 (assume overcharge) = 20.5 - AP3 - TB3 = 14.5 - 10 Wounds = -4 or -5 Critical Effect.

Anyway as pointed out above the long las is not actually a sniper fifle, since firing it gives away the target's position. It is more of a military version of a big-hame hunting rifle, if you will. You cannot quietly pick off members of an enemy squad with a long las from a place of concealment.

An average Guardsman will survive a well-aimed shot from a long las half the time actually.

3d10 = 16.5 average damage + 4 (assume overcharge) = 20.5 - AP3 - TB3 = 14.5 - 10 Wounds = -4 or -5 Critical Effect.

Anyway as pointed out above the long las is not actually a sniper fifle, since firing it gives away the target's position. It is more of a military version of a big-hame hunting rifle, if you will. You cannot quietly pick off members of an enemy squad with a long las from a place of concealment.

With a Whisper-Bolt Discharger, you can. Granted, it's not available in Only War Core Rulebook, so make of that point what you will. It's actually odd as hell that they didn't include that, since I could easily see entire Regiments being fit to get Silencers or Whisper-Bolt Dischargers...

With a Whisper-Bolt Discharger, you can. Granted, it's not available in Only War Core Rulebook, so make of that point what you will. It's actually odd as hell that they didn't include that, since I could easily see entire Regiments being fit to get Silencers or Whisper-Bolt Dischargers...

Presumably to make a niche for the sniper rifle. There's no real point in it otherwise.

And the archetypal 40K sniper weapon isn't a las weapon, so...

With a Whisper-Bolt Discharger, you can. Granted, it's not available in Only War Core Rulebook, so make of that point what you will. It's actually odd as hell that they didn't include that, since I could easily see entire Regiments being fit to get Silencers or Whisper-Bolt Dischargers...

Presumably to make a niche for the sniper rifle. There's no real point in it otherwise.

And the archetypal 40K sniper weapon isn't a las weapon, so...

Well first of all, as described earlier, both weapons still have points to them, and they most definitely have their niches.

But secondly, the archetypical 40k sniping weapon is definitely the Longlas. Las-weapons is the most widely available form of weapon amongst the entire Imperial Military, and silencing is very uncommon for sniper weapons in combat scenarios.

As a culture, we've gotten the idea that sniping is about silence and stealth, but it's not. It's about accuracy and range. Even with a nanosecond's worth of light flashing by, it's no more than a muzzle-flash of a SP-sniper rifle, still more than difficult to ascertain from whence the shot came.

But even disregarding the silencing importance (or lack thereof) of the Silencer and the Whisper-Bolt Discharger (of which the Silencer is already superior, either way) in context of sniping, I was actually more thinking of tactical circumstances. Using only the Core Rules of Only War, there's no way for a squad of infiltrators or a small task-force to silence their field-issue Las-Carbines, for example.

Well I'm using "sniper" in this context in the way our cukture uses it, i.e., it's about stealth.

I'm not that well-versed on 40K novels and such, but I had always thought that the sniper weapons depicted in TT were intended to be either solid-projectile or needle weapons.

The inability to silence las-weapons in OW is, I think, deliberate. EDIT: I'm having problems trying to rationalize how you _could_ silence a 40K las weapon, given that its sound is described as coming as superheating of the air (isn't it? I think).

The inability to silence las-weapons in OW is, I think, deliberate. EDIT: I'm having problems trying to rationalize how you _could_ silence a 40K las weapon, given that its sound is described as coming as superheating of the air (isn't it? I think).

Well, the laser discharge itself is soundless (not just silent), has no muzzle flash and is visible only where there's a lot of particles in the air.

If there is a noise (and my base assumption has always been that you can't get a silencer for a longlas because it doesn't need one), the only reason it would make a noise when fired would be the air in the path of the beam being ionized (not superheated, though the difference is of little interest outside of the lab), causing a "thunderclap" as air rushes in to fill the low-pressure volume.

EDIT: Forgot to point out:

The laser blast also moves (by definition) at the speed of light, meaning that for distances relevant to this game, there is no measureable delay between firing and hitting (again labs may differ). Bullets are fast, but on the order of 10^7 or more slower than light.

Well I'm using "sniper" in this context in the way our cukture uses it, i.e., it's about stealth.

I'm not that well-versed on 40K novels and such, but I had always thought that the sniper weapons depicted in TT were intended to be either solid-projectile or needle weapons.

The inability to silence las-weapons in OW is, I think, deliberate. EDIT: I'm having problems trying to rationalize how you _could_ silence a 40K las weapon, given that its sound is described as coming as superheating of the air (isn't it? I think).

Well that's the problem, our culture is using it wrong. It's never been about "stealth" as it exists in our cultural conciousness, it's something created by modernist Hollywood, nothing else. In reality, you usually do not silence sniper weapons, simply because silencers tend to interfere with more important aspects (velocity, accuracy, etc), while also being incredibly ineffective.

Oddly, the most common "sniper rifle" in the TT/fluff is actually ratlings with needle weapons. It's actually odd that the Ratlings in Only War starts with either Sniper Rifle or Long-Las, instead of a Needle Rifle. If things had been a little different, Ratlings starting with Exotic Weapon Proficiency (Needle) could actually have been a pretty nice aspect, but it's possible that they worried about the possible balance issues with that (although I don't see why they would be very big, if we consider the monstrosities we've been able to construct in this thread).

The lack of the whisper-bolt discharger in Only War may be deliberate, but I just don't see the rationale for it. It is more likely that at some point, they have to stop adding stuff, as the book starts swelling out of proportions fairly quickly, if you take all the various knick-knacks mentioned in the entire line into account.

As for being able to silence/conceal a lasweapon; Tenebrae's post makes sense in reality, but not so much in the context of the universe. Las-shots are clearly visible, similar to blasters in Star Wars, and I'd think that the visibility itself would be more interesting to discuss than the speed at which light travels, simply because there's no reason for them to fire the lasweapons in a way that would reveal the light at all.

I prefer to think of it like this; The reason they're tuned to the visible spectrum is because the Imperial Guard has no idea what they're doing, and when the Adeptus Mechanicus tunes the weapons or builds them, they are set to red FOR THE GLORY OF THE OMNISSIAH .

And yes, the reason there's a loud and audible *crack* when firing lasweapons is because they ionize and superheat the air it travels through. I also like to imagine that there's a big *pew* coming from the weapon itself, but that's just me.

As for just how Whisper-Bolt Dischargers work, here's the fluff text:

As many Imperial Guardsmen are quick to attest, one of the greatest difficulties of using las-weapons is their visibility. Where projectile weapons can have their report dampened with relative ease, the distinctive luminescence and familiar crack of a lasgun are not so easily concealed. The mercenary Whisper-bolt weapons require a replacement for the emitters in the barrel, discharging las-blasts that are all but invisible and which create a far less noticeable sound.

Perception-based Tests to notice shots made from a las weapon with this upgrade suffer an additional –20 penalty, and can only be attempted at half the normal distance. However, the necessary changes mean that the discharges are less intense and less deadly, reducing the weapon’s damage by 1.

Upgrades: Any Pistol- or Basic-class Las weapon.

How do they work? Well, clearly, the resonance flux-capacitor have reversed polarizations, resulting in reverse ionization within hydrogen-oxygen atmospheres, while re-tuning the laser-spectrum of the focusing lenses of the forward battery to appear invisible to the naked eye. Unless you're a cat.

There's not a lot that's stealthy about a long range projectile rifle, you can muzzle brake, flash suppress and what not, but its still a huge crack of a bullet breaking the sound barrier and that is what really gives you the weapons damage and range.

High velocity lead.

If you have a chance to fire off a big centrefire rifle on a range then you'll also find out the other drawbacks of long distance shooting- wind, bullet spin, barometric pressure, altitude, humidity, differences in ammunition types, bullet weight, type, powder load and hell, if its a long enough shot you'll also have to contend with the coriolis deflection of the planet's spin itself.

The las gun doesn't care about much of that at all

As any serious shooter will tell you, consistancy in the weapon and ammunition makes a huge difference to your actual performance. Back when I did a lot of centrefire rifle shooting killing feral pigs and kangaroos, the actual weapons themselves (a .308, .270 Win-Magnum and a .300) where not so much the issue in terms of their accuracy, but pretty much every round for those guns got hand-loaded by me, with exactly the same bullets, same powder load and primers to hit anything past 400m and at around the 750m mark- they where the difference.

Could have signed me up for a long-las any day

Forget silencers on a big rifle, they destroy targets by a combination of bullet mass and velocity, you run a full load through one with a silencer hanging off it and all you'll get is a huge bang, the sound barrier being broken anyway and your silencer probably flying off the front or ending up looking like the end of Elmer Fudd's shotgun after Bugs stuck his carrot in it. Which means you're having to run sub-sonic ammunition which is a whole different business, it will effectively quarter your range, which may not be much of a difference between 50-150m on a big gun, but at 200+m its really running out of puff and dropping dramatically. It's still quite lethal, but you're going to be mucking around by dialing it in about 2-3m above the head of your target.