Not entirely sure how that would work, because you'd still have to spend the points to fire the weapon, as I understand it. and RF isn't determined on the WS/BS roll but on the Damage roll on a natural 10.

Not entirely sure how that would work, because you'd still have to spend the points to fire the weapon, as I understand it. and RF isn't determined on the WS/BS roll but on the Damage roll on a natural 10.

I'd imagine that an attack like this would essentially "override" the necessity of spending the weapon's action points, since it would cost 4 Action Points to begin with, which covers the single use of any weapon.

Also, I may have been unclear in the language, but the action I wrote out would basically work like this:

Spend 4 Action Points

Make an attack with any weapon with a penalty equal to twice the total Tb and Armor of the target.

Roll your damage

Take your d10 damage result and add Degrees of Success from the original Attack Roll. If it adds to 10 or more, you achieve Righteous Fury! (A critical Hit, instant kill to most enemies)

Edit: Basically, the game already has a method for achieving a single shot kill (Righteous Fury), so I think the best method for reflecting single shot kills in the game would be to find a way to let people do a "called righteous fury". It has the added benefit of still requiring the attack to actually beat armor and toughness before inflicting a wound, as well.

Edit: Basically, the game already has a method for achieving a single shot kill (Righteous Fury), so I think the best method for reflecting single shot kills in the game would be to find a way to let people do a "called righteous fury".

That's actually a pretty good idea. I'd probably do something a bit different though. Maybe something along the lines of allowing Righteous Fury on numbers lower than 10 based on degrees of success? So get X degrees of success and you could get Righteous Fury on a roll of 9 or 10.

Edit: Basically, the game already has a method for achieving a single shot kill (Righteous Fury), so I think the best method for reflecting single shot kills in the game would be to find a way to let people do a "called righteous fury".

That's actually a pretty good idea. I'd probably do something a bit different though. Maybe something along the lines of allowing Righteous Fury on numbers lower than 10 based on degrees of success? So get X degrees of success and you could get Righteous Fury on a roll of 9 or 10.

I might be biased, but I think I like mine better. Righteous fury is by definition, a random occurrence. It can happen with any weapon at any time. I prefer the damage roll being tied to DoS

How do I explain my thoughts?

Consider a WWII machine gun and a WWII sniper rifle. Both use the same ammo, so the same velocity and mass. One has a high rate of fire the other is easier to aim. A machine gun bullet between the eyes would do as much damage sniper rifle bullet between the eyes. So in my thinking a weapon should not do more damage because it is easier to aim.

But on the other hand the sniper rifle can more reliably hit a vital location than a machine gun can. But, everyone that has played a first person shooter knows, if your target knows a sniper is shooting at them (or going too) it is hard to aim for the vital spots as the opportunities would be fleeting.

Sniping most of the time is against an unaware opponent. Where you can carefully aim without evasive action from the target. So in my reckoning bonus damage should be against targets that don't know (Until the first shot is fired) they are being shot at. That would seem that if you catch someone by surprise you should get bonus damage. But in my opinion suddenly drawing your weapons and shooting should not have this effect as you don't have the time to properly prepare your shot.

In my opinion to get a good sniper shot off, the ones where a head explodes, the following needs to happen beyond seeing your target. First you need to be aware of your target; you are tracking your target. Second you need to be concealed from your target; people tend to react when they see a gun pointed at them.

I was initially thinking of bonus damage to unaware/helpless targets, but after typing all the above I am thinking the following. That ranged weapons with the Accurate Quality do additional damage for their first hit in an encounter if you could see your target at the beginning of the encounter and they have not seen you. The question of how much bonus damage; I think the degrees of success would be a good system. Of course the rule would need to be worded better, but you should get the idea.

Anyway that is my opinion.

No, because that leaves you no AP to fire the rifle, which costs 3 AP.

Good point i forgot the actual shot!

So:

1st A = Aim

2nd A = Called shot head

3rd A = Called shot +5WE

4th A = Attack (Single shot)

Why do you say it costs 3AP to make an attack?

What have i missed there?

In addition to the 1/3 rate of fire, You can only make 1 attack action per turn. You can spend action points to increase your rate of fire, but it's still only 1 attack action. So thhings like +5 aren't applicable on your own turn, as any number of hits are still the result of the 1 permitted attack action..

Edit: Basically, the game already has a method for achieving a single shot kill (Righteous Fury), so I think the best method for reflecting single shot kills in the game would be to find a way to let people do a "called righteous fury".

That's actually a pretty good idea. I'd probably do something a bit different though. Maybe something along the lines of allowing Righteous Fury on numbers lower than 10 based on degrees of success? So get X degrees of success and you could get Righteous Fury on a roll of 9 or 10.

I might be biased, but I think I like mine better. Righteous fury is by definition, a random occurrence. It can happen with any weapon at any time. I prefer the damage roll being tied to DoS

The big critiques that I would have for your approach are that it cannot be used for melee attacks (although any ranged weapon can be made Accurate with the Red Dot Laser Sight) and that it is limited by the number of attack bonuses that are now explicitly available in game (unaware targets and range of target are no longer listed in the rules, from what I can see; these rules seem to have gotten rid of a lot of the equipment and environment bonuses to attacks). Your idea does reflect a sniper attack pretty well, but what I like about allowing a called Righteous Fury/Critical Hit is that it can reflect the old "Commissar blasts someone in the back of the head" or "Swordmaster Assassin cuts someone's head clean off". I do agree with you on tying the ability to Degrees of Success, though.

Sniping most of the time is against an unaware opponent.

Battlefield marksmanship isn't, though. It's also the kind of precision shooting that'll happen more often in a roleplaying game.

For those who don't know the difference: if the guy in your team with a sniper rifle spends most time far away from the team, hidden under the cameleoline cloak and hunting for previously designated targets or providing you with long distance fire support, he's a sniper. If the guy tags along with you and uses his sniper rifle to take out priority targets fast in ensuing shootouts, he's a designated marksman.

As a thought would something along the lines of a "Precision Attack" action work here? An action that limits rate of attack to 1 and is made in place of a normal melee or ranged attack as opposed to an augment for one and as a bonus adds either the number of action points spent on the attack or perhaps the perception bonus of the attacker to the damage?

Accurate could interact with the bonus damage to either double it or multiply it by 1.5 rounding down. Melee weapons don't get much from the quality but there's no reason "accurate" melee weapons couldn't exist with some table modding if required.

This would for perception 30 or 3 action point sniper rifle shot give damage in the range of 13 to 23 on impact for our sniper headshot example and 18 to 28 with the crit shot talent!

Note that this doesn't give us any bonus to hit which would be covered by normal aims instead. Sort of fire or strike for effect.

I was initially concerened that this would become the obvious attack action for all weapons with rate of fire less than 1 but for sniper rifles and similar it probably should be and there are arguements for disallowing or disqualifing some weapons, for example spray, blast and innaccurate ones as required.

What do people think?

Just gonna add this here from last night, already posted part of it in the wounds thread, but...

Beginning of the combat, the Jenny the Adept shot a Novice level npc in the unarmored face with her shotgun.This only reduced him by one wound. Had the same shot been made against an NPC that used the Wound Tables, it would have resulted in a bruised forehead. The Hell Party found this mildly humorous and continued with the combat.

The combat went on a while longer with more logical results, but then Jenny the Adept took several shots from a heavy stubber, all in the same turn, with only some bruises to show for it, but next turn was stabbed in the foot by a dying mook with a knife who was laying prone on the floor. I had to re-roll this, as originally the mook hit her in the head, without leaving the prone position on the floor. Without throwing the knife. Also note that this is just a regular knife. Not a power stiletto or anything fancy. It promptly severed the adepts leg due to +20 on the wound table from all those bruises.

At the same time Jenny the Adept looses her leg, James the Guardsman was going at a Master NPC unarmed. Using his high Agility and Strength scores, he both avoided being hit, and landed enough punches on the target through it's defense in one turn that on the next turn he only had to land a single punch, detonating the Master NPCs skull with enough force that the skull shrapnel killed two nearby npcs, and the adept. She wisely decided to decided to burn a fate point, avoiding being blasted apart completely by the single piece of flying skull fragment, like she had swallowed a grenade. Because we did roll to see what would have happened without that Fate point.

At this point someone yelled 'FATALITY!' and most of the party was incapacitated with laughter at how bad this really is.

Beginning of the combat, the Jenny the Adept shot a Novice level npc in the unarmored face with her shotgun.This only reduced him by one wound. Had the same shot been made against an NPC that used the Wound Tables, it would have resulted in a bruised forehead.

Problem there is your description. Dude ducked at the last moment or something.

It's definitely an issue, the case of minor hits having really dramatic effects. I'm not really sure how to avoid it though, it was a phenomenon that could also pretty easily occur in first edition, considering damage just pushes you further down the criticals track once you're onto it.

Yes, but a minor hit on that critical table results in a slightly exaggerated effect from the one before it.

It was also a flaw in that system that a heavy critical hit on the leg could result with a loss of an arm the turn after if the next attack hit and damaged a perfectly fine limb. We fixed this by adding a new set of "critical wounds" for each distinct location.

Here the problem can easily by fixed by having "minor hits" - less than your TB for example, result in a gained level of fatigue instead of a wound. And it can easily be incorporated into the system by having the tables themselves say on a 1-8, or whatever "if this hit was below your TB, add a level of fatigue instead of a wound."

Easily, elegant and prevents people from exploding- and it means you draw the line at someones' TB.

Fatigue ends up playing an even bigger roll, and so does Toughness.

Problem there is your description. Dude ducked at the last moment or something.

That makes zero sense, particularly since the players read the description of how Spray weapons work in game. A bolter not penning I can make that excuse, but a shotgun doesn't care much if you 'duck' at the last moment.

The players actually managed to set up, just to see if they could do it, a npc/player explosion chain reaction, using the wound bonuses to get multiple targets from no wounds to a '30' in a single turn. The result was not only a TPK but also annihilated all the npcs.

I actually really love that idea, Saldre. You've managed to make Toughness a hell of a lot more relevant and fix some glaring issues with the wound system in one go. Hopefully FFG notice this.

I do not yet have a confident handle on the new Beta rules, so apologies in advance if I'm wrong about this.

Building on a previous remark in this thread, the Beta combat appears to have a much stronger emphasis on multiple hits with its Rate-of-Attack (RoA) / Action Points mechanic. This seems to afford many weapons, perhaps including melee, with an intrinsic ability for multiple hits with a single attack - thereby increasing the damage/Wound Effects in a single attack beyond most of the examples suggested in this thread. (This is different from 1st Edition's multiple hits with Full/Semi-Auto, which was a specific mode of fire with specific weapons.)

If there is an issue with an impossibility to kill in a single hit (versus attack) this does not eliminate that issue - and, of course like a LongLas shot, the sniper example focuses expressly on it. However, in the bigger combat picture, the multiple-hits-in-a-single-attack emphasis perhaps mitigates this general concern quite a lot. (And, if this is true, then maybe the narrative becomes a sniper making short work of a target with his two quick hits to the noggin from distance in a single attack .)

Again though, haven't played the system yet so not sure.

Again though, haven't played the system yet so not sure.

Assuming an undamaged target, even multiple hits and multiple wounds in a single attack don't usually result in a kill, they just set up the target for a one shot kill in the next turn.

Again though, haven't played the system yet so not sure.

Assuming an undamaged target, even multiple hits and multiple wounds in a single attack don't usually result in a kill, they just set up the target for a one shot kill in the next turn.

You might be right Baronlveagh, a point that I look forward to exploring in some playtesting. However, 2-3 hits in a single attack is 2-3 chances for Righteous Fury - any one of which instantly kills a mook. For a Elite/Master NPC this provides at least the potential for a pretty damaging multiple-hit-single-attack, if a hit is yet to be applied after a Righteous Fury in the same attack. Now consider if the weapon has Tearing, like Bolters or Chainswords. 2-3 hits provides 4-6 chances to roll a Righteous Fury, any of which instantly kill mooks and providing a significant possibility of a devastating first strike to an Elite/Master NPC.

Another mitigating factor in this topic, I suspect, is the elimination of Hit Points, which I don't believe has been mentioned in this thread. No more guardsman with 20 hit points and 4 TB versus the Adept with 10 hit points and 2-3 TB. Now, it's just the guardsman's 4 TB versus the Adept's 2-3 TB. Would seem to level the playing field for a human's death threshold. How exactly it all fits together in 2nd Edition combat I'm not sure.

I suspect for the overwhelming vast majority of us, this is all theoretical. Looking forward to playtesting to see what actually happens when one puts it all together. No question about one thing - the Beta is very different from what we're all used to.

Again though, haven't played the system yet so not sure.

Assuming an undamaged target, even multiple hits and multiple wounds in a single attack don't usually result in a kill, they just set up the target for a one shot kill in the next turn.

You might be right Baronlveagh, a point that I look forward to exploring in some playtesting. However, 2-3 hits in a single attack is 2-3 chances for Righteous Fury - any one of which instantly kills a mook. For a Elite/Master NPC this provides at least the potential for a pretty damaging multiple-hit-single-attack, if a hit is yet to be applied after a Righteous Fury in the same attack. Now consider if the weapon has Tearing, like Bolters or Chainswords. 2-3 hits provides 4-6 chances to roll a Righteous Fury, any of which instantly kill mooks and providing a significant possibility of a devastating first strike to an Elite/Master NPC.

Damage doesn't matter. Only 10s.

I'm doing exactly this when testing a new version or new rpg, a headshot test.

To solve this "unrealistic" combat problem (yes, it's a rule problem to me) I made some houserules.

First I was searching the beta rules for the reach modification table but I didn't find it.

So i assumed it is a point blank bonus of +30 for an head shot.

But now let's do the test. A PC with WS of 45 should in most cases be able to kill a standard NPC (or PC too) with one headshot with a single shot stub revolver the other can't dodge.

Let's assume the the unaware npc has T of 32, no armor on head location. The PC has a chance to hit of 85 (WS 45 + 30 point blank +10 aim).
Now, let's not be too stingy to the DH2 combat rules an let the PC role a good 22 on his attack. NPC can't dodge so there are the full 6 raw successes, which doesn't give anything more than standard damage in the raw rules.
The stub revolver does 1d10+2 Impact damage. Let's say we throw a good 8 with the dice. this does a damage of 10. subtracting the Tb of the npc there is a net damage of 7.
Referencing the wound table for head impact this is following damage:

The strike smashes into the target’s cheek, straining his neck as it is violently snapped to the side. If the degrees of success on the attack roll are greater than the target’s Tb, he suffers is Dazed for 1 round and suffers 1 fatigue.

Ok, If I didn't overlooked a specific rule this is so laughable.

After testing a little I tried to add the +5 crit table rule for every margin of success in this case 6x5=30 plus the 7 from the revolver for 37.
Now reading the table: BAAAAAM!
This it how a headshot on an unprotected head shoud be.

Now you could say that auto weap. have too much damage. But I use it only on singel shot.
Now single shot weapons a too powerful. I think they are only more powerful but not too powerful now.

Weapons with autofire do their +5 with every hit plus an additional dmg dice, so the still have an advantage over single shot weapons.

Lets say we didn't shot on our target from point blank and shoot from normal range (without +30 WS bonus) then we had only 3 successes. Then we had "only" a dmg of 3x5+7=22.
Reading the crit table:
The blow robs the target of his sight temporarily, shattering the back of his skull and disrupting the optic nerve. The target Blood Loss (4) and must make a –30 Toughness test or become Unconscious for a number of rounds equal to his degrees of failure. Further, the target is Blinded until the wound is healed.

Maybe I will add the +5 until the second succes. But for me this seems a soulution. my players and I are satisfied with.

PS: Sorry for my not so clean english!

I'm noticing a lot of issues with crit results have to do with the impact table being frankly ridiculous to represent small arms fire. Half of the results just make no **** sense. A pistol round "violently snapping" someone's neck to the side? Bullets bruising? It's silly.

Well you are in a world were cloth is better then modern day ballistic armor, so..yeah...go AR 3 robes!

I've given this a bit of thought, run throught he scenarios and scoured the rules.

The 'Commissar execution' problem

Personally i think this scenario is covered on p13.

The Core Mechanic

Whenever a character attempts an action that has some chance of failure, his player makes a percentile roll to decide the outcome.

Is the Commissar likely to fail? I'd probably make the Commissar roll just to see if the bolt psitol jams. No jam, one dead Guardsman.

The Sniper problem

Yes...this does remain an issue. There needs to be some mechanism of allowing a single shot to inflict multiple wounds. Many options have been discussed, so hopefully FFG will come up with an elegant answer.

Something i was toying with was to allow DoS with Single Shots to increase the chance of a Ctitical wound on the damage roll.

Single shots only

1DoS = Crit on 10

2DoS = Crit on 9, 10

3DoS = Crit on 8, 9, 10

4DoS = Crit on 7, 8, 9, 10

etc.

So a single shot with a sniper rifle and 4DoS would Crit on a 7+. That way 'snipers' can Crita and one-shot-kill mooks easier, while not upping their overall damage or adding in fiddly rules, new talents, etc.

A big issue, IMO, is the common assumption that any hit to a location is inherently a solid hit to the middle of that location - ie, all headbutts are right between the eyes, etc., rather than merely being in the general vicinity of that location. Standard assumptions in the rules - old and new - are that 90%+ of hits are grazes and other minor flesh wounds.

The matter of accurate weapons: the old damage-for-DoS element seems to have been folded into base damage (hence why the sniper rifle deals 1d10+8). It isn't necessarily the best way of doing it, but it isn't gone entirely.

For big single shots, I suggest modifying the Called Shot action - it caps the attack at RoA 1, but adds +5 per DoS to the wound roll (not damage - that avoids the 'sniping tanks' phenomenon of Only War.

A big issue, IMO, is the common assumption that any hit to a location is inherently a solid hit to the middle of that location - ie, all headbutts are right between the eyes, etc., rather than merely being in the general vicinity of that location. Standard assumptions in the rules - old and new - are that 90%+ of hits are grazes and other minor flesh wounds.

The matter of accurate weapons: the old damage-for-DoS element seems to have been folded into base damage (hence why the sniper rifle deals 1d10+8). It isn't necessarily the best way of doing it, but it isn't gone entirely.

For big single shots, I suggest modifying the Called Shot action - it caps the attack at RoA 1, but adds +5 per DoS to the wound roll (not damage - that avoids the 'sniping tanks' phenomenon of Only War.

That's actually a pretty good change to mechanic, as it factors in ballistic skill to determine how 'hard' a target was hit with, as an example, a sniper rifle.

@Luddite, the problem is that the combat and narrative systems are handled completely separate. If the commissar shoots the guardsman outside 'combat', you're absolutely correct that it's handled by the narrative system and he simply shoots the unlucky sod. However, there's an artificial divide between 'narrative' and 'combat' that states that any 'narrative' action must be completed before 'combat' begins and 'narrative' rules don't resume until after 'combat' ends.

I agree that logically what you're saying is correct, but it's not RAW.