I'd like this thread to be about people's comments on the weapon balance within the current ruleset. It's pretty obvious to me that a lot of work was done to the weapon qualities and the weapons themselves to add differentiation and balance weapon choices. I think, ideally, every weapon in the game would be balanced to where they are all comparably viable choices in combat, at least when compared to weapons of their own type (SP, Las, etc.).

Some Caveats:
A lot has been said about high RoF weapons being much better than lower RoF weapons. That topic has its own thread. For the purposes of this thread, I think it would best to limit comparisons between high RoF and low RoF weapons. Specifically, the Autopistol, Lasgun, and Autogun all currently seem unbalanced due to their ability to gain a high chance of landing a critical hit. This is a known issue, already. However, I do think it can be worth discussing RoF as a way of balancing weapons (e.g. reducing the RoF of Hotshot Lasgun and Laspistol to make them more comparable to the regular Lasgun and Laspistol).

There is also the argument of some weapons being meant to be strictly better than others (Bolt Weapons should be better than SP, Plasma Weapons and Melta Weapons should be better than Bolt). If a meltagun is heavily outclasses by a hotshot lascannon, however, that would be a balance issue. I'd like for every weapon to have some utility to it, though.

In general, I'd like this to contain arguments about how weapons compare within the context of the system. I don't want to see arguments about why all melee weapons don't add strength bonus or how RoF is vastly overpowered, because the weapons are at least intended to be balanced with differing RoFs.

Questions:
Are there tiersof weapon groups, and if so what are they? Here are the groups.
Las
SP
Bolt
Plasma
Melta
Flame
Low-Tech
Exotic

Explosives

Chain
Power
Low-Tech
Force
Shock
Exotic
How do the groups compare to each other as a whole? Are any of them demonstrably bad?
How do the weapons WITHIN each group compare to each other? Are they all comparable/balanced?
How does melee compare with ranged?

Current Observations of Mine:
Las weapons are just plain better than SP weapons due to the higher RoF and damage. The ability of SP weapons to use special ammunition doesn't really outweigh this, in my opinion. Change Overcharge to reduce the RoF of the weapon using it by 1 or 2. The hotshot las weapons are far and away better than their counterparts. I think their RoF should be reduced by 1.
SP weapons are for the most part balanced with each other. I think the stub revolver needs some tweaking or could just be removed outright. Maybe increasing its damage, availability, or giving it a special quality (it could be cool to double its clip and say that it's double-barreled and has the Storm quality). I think the Spray ability finally makes shotguns a viable choice. The heavy stubber is crap compared to the equally rare autogun. Treat it like the stub revolver and give it Storm.
Bolt weapons all look pretty good to me. The damage output is strong and tearing is a great quality. They also get access to all the cool ammunition.
I like the Melta quality, but it doesn't really shine unless shooting at people in cover or in a vehicle. The really variable damage (2d10) feels good thematically, but I'm not sure how good it is for balance.
Plasma weapons look good to me. They have a lot more reliable damage than Melta weapons, and decent RoF. These things are what you're going to want to use against a high toughness enemy.
Flame weapons I'm glad to see the wonky rules from the past version gone and see Flame weapons treated the same as other weapons. I do think that the flame quality/burning is very weak, though, and these flame weapons are just slightly better shotguns. I'd suggest adding Sapping, to reflect how fatiguing it can be to experience such intense heat.
Low-Tech weapons get a huge boost from the loss of the primitive quality. Single Shot is an interesting quality that I think could be used for the sniper rifle to give it a more manageable RoF (that way the Sniper Rifle can be braced and aimed/called shot in the same turn). I'm glad to see the throwing distance increased. I don't see why the bow would be rarer than the crossbow. The crossbow is already kind of better than the bow. I say you should add Sb to the bow, given that it's a heavily strength-based weapon, but maybe make it Sb minus 2.
Exotic weapons look good. I'm psyched to finally see the Needle weapons have a high enough damage and Felling enabling them to actually harm a decently tough/armored target. They now can serve in actual combat as opposed to just being useful against low armor targets/narrative assassinations. Toxic/Weakened don't seem very powerful, but the combination of Felling does feel like it reflects the Needle Weapons fluff-wise. Also, rules-wise, it should be clarified if Toxic gives a Weakened level equal to the Toxic rating, or if it always gives Weakened (2).

Explosives all look pretty good other than Frag Grenades. 2d10 is just too swingy of a damage for what is meant to be a pretty devastating weapon. It's too likely that a decently armored target can drop a grenade at their feet and suffer little effect. Give Frag Grenades Tearing and they get a 30% chance of Righteous Fury and an above average chance of 10+ damage. Fluff-wise, Bolters shoot explosive bullets which have tearing. Why would an explosive grenade not also have tearing?

Chain weapons look good other than the Eviscerator. Its RoF is so low that a character can't do any other action if she swings it. This means that the best strategy to deal with it is to just disengage each turn. Bump its RoF to 1/3 and drop its Pen by 1 and damage by 2.

The Power weapons all look great. I've heard some complaints about their Pen of 3, but consider that the Power Field allows them to disable both weapons AND armor locations in 1-3 hits. That strikes me as a much more thematic representation.

Low-Tech weapons need some work. First, the Great Weapon is a heavier, rarer, and Unbalanced version of the Staff, with no advantage. Given that Great Weapon can reflect a larger sword, axe, or whatever, I'd suggest turning it into a weapon modification. Have it be available to all Light Low-Tech Melee weapons and add 1d10 damage, change the weapon to Heavy, and the Single Shot quality. In turn, change the Staff to a Light weapon (Heavy weapons cause a penalty to Warband Subtlety; surely carrying a staff around would not do this), drop damage to 1d10, and bump up its RoF to 1. The Unarmed attack has issues with its RoF, but that discussion can be saved for another thread.

The Force sword is going to be much better than the Force Staff at Higher Levels, and is close to a better choice than the Force Staff if it gets changed to 1d10 damage, and RoF 1 as I suggest above. I'd probably allow it to function as a PsyFocus and give it the Concussive Quality to compensate.

I love the shock weapons, as they are both much more viable in combat now.

The Hunting Lance is also good, but unless my PDF reader is messed up, it isn't displaying a Pen Value.

So, one loooong post later, those are my thoughts. I look forward to seeing what everyone else thinks.

Bolters shoot explosive bullets which have tearing. Why would an explosive grenade not also have tearing?

Bolts explode inside you. Grenades explode outside, hitting you with a blastwave (and unless you are very close, a rather unimpressive one) and lots of fragments. Fragments tend to have a poor job penetrating armour, so armoured targets should be a lot less scared of them.

Doesn't mean your wrong about the very swingy damage on frag grenades, but I don't think they are justified having tearing.

Great Weapons not being Rendng is bizarre, considering the Warhammer is also listed. It also doesn't do +SB damage anymore for some reason.

Knives are inferior to bare fists. The knife (1d10-2) versus the unarmed attack (1d5+SB) is silly; if you have an average Strength (30), then your fists will deal between 4 and 8 damage, while the jnife will deal between 0 and 8.

An Eviscerator should not have better Pen than a Meltagun, Plasma Gun, or Power Sword.

Melta ignoring armor is silly; keep the old rule.

Bolter penetration is not enough to pierce Flak armor, or even cloth robes.

" Melta ignoring armor is silly; keep the old rule."

Silly? That doesn't give us much to go on, and honestly I don't really agree. Melta weapons being extremely potent at short ranges, but quickly losing their capacity to do much penetration makes a lot of sense with how they work; stuff that's superheated tends to cool fast once exposed to the air. I do think there should be specific amendments to how it interacts with vehicle armour, but I think it's perfectly acceptable and fluff accurate for Melta to pierce anything up to power armour at short range.

I personally like having lowered pen values for everything. It makes all of the armor more useful at later stages of the game and puts more emphasis on thematic differences between weapons than raw power ones. So a bolster's Pen can't get through flak armor. It still has a decent RoF and does enough damage to reliably deal at least one wound to most targets, and has an almost doubled chance of righteous fury. If an action is added to make called shots to increase chance of righteous fury, bolters get even better. Maybe add the blast quality to them to reflect the fluff better.

The armored robes are pretty funny, especially compared to the (extremely rare!) body glove that doesn't even have a fluff entry. They could do with a decrease.

Knives do kind of suck, yeah. Maybe just copy the stats for throwing knives (1d5 +sb, RoF 1). Unarmed could probably have its RoF dropped down a lot along with damage then add a talent that increases its RoF and damage.

I agree with decreasing the eviscerators pen in exchange for better RoF, but I don't think it's necessarily bad to have something like that with a higher pen than the Bolter. Bolters fit their thematic role pretty well with the current stats, I don't think they necessarily need to have a super high pen to fit it as well.

I can see the argument against frag grenades getting Tearing from the fluff, but its still the best solution to boosting them up, in my opinion.

Bolters fire armor-piercing rounds. I think they deserve to be capable of piercing the basic flak armour.

And their pen is only beaten by a heavy duty sniper rifle, power weapons, and melta weapons. Compared to the other guns, they do have significant armor piercing ability. The ability to completely ignore armor in this game seems to has been omitted for the sake of making armor more valuable.

The question to ask is; "if you are being shot by a bolter, should flak armour help, at all, compared to being naked?" not "Should bolter-fire injure you, even through flak armour?".

I think bolters-vs-flak is in about the right place; flak helps less against bolters than it does against lasfire, but you'd rather have it than be naked.

If there is a problem, I think it's in bolters-vs-robes and/or bolters-vs-power armour. Robes currently do give an edge against bolter-fire compared to nudity and I'm not sure they should. Power armour doesn't help very significantly against bolter-fire, when I think it again, probably should.

In DH 1, compared to the tabletop, armour seemed to scale (very roughly) along the lines of increments of 2 (as in, 2 points of armour = 6+ save, 4 points 5+ etc). In DH 2, it seems to be something along the lines of 3 points = 6+, 4 points = 5+ and so forth, which doesn't really scale all that well, as well as not being in line at all with the penetration values the weapons have. I realise P&P doesn't need to be modelled after the tabletop, but since it's the first line of reference for most of us, maybe some consideration should be put into this.

In the custom ammo section (p 150-151), Expander Rounds are listed as -1 damage, +2 pen. Logically, that's exactly backwards. In fact, that's the mechanics I'd expect to see on an Armor-piercing Round (which, of course, isn't even listed).

Hmm...move along...nothing to see on this failed post.

Curse the no delete option...