So i've gotten a hold of the Beta, and did some reading over the material so i can get it prepped for a game this weekend. i really liked how they redid char-gen, but i have some questions about combat, because that has changed drastically.

what drove FFG to move away from full and half actions to APs? it just seems like unnecessary bookkeeping to keep track of all of your action points than it is to simply say "you've spent a full action or its equivalent, NEXT".

wounds: can someone explain to me how they're supposed to work? i've read over the entire section, but it's like trying to parse Paradise Lost.

First suggestion: go over to the 'game mechanics' board and look for the three threads named "Combat test: 1," "....2," and "...3." They are good examples of how combat is run.

Here's my summary: when you hit, you roll damage and subtract defense. That gives you a number. If it's higher than 0, they've suffered a wound. You find the appropriate chart (i.e. energy attack on head), roll 1d10, add the number, and the character takes that effect. Sometimes, that does nothing, but even if the result is negligible, each wound ALSO gives that character a +5 for any future wound rolls (+10 if the attacking PC got a righteous fury). So they get worse and worse the more times you get hit.

You don't roll 1d10 on the wound table.

It is just the damage overflow, which is greater than defense + modifiers from previous wounds.

Thanks for the correction!

While I'm here, I'll also add something I forgot to mention - a Righteous Fury will also instantly take out minor npcs. See "Critical Wounds," p207.

By moving from Full/Half actions to AP, FFG were also able to do away with swift/lightning attack, semi-/full-auto, reactions (as a separate thing), and probably some other things. Overall I'd say things turned out simpler than in DH1, although there is some argument over balancing issues within the AP system (mostly weapon RoF/RoA).

By moving from Full/Half actions to AP, FFG were also able to do away with swift/lightning attack, semi-/full-auto, reactions (as a separate thing), and probably some other things. Overall I'd say things turned out simpler than in DH1, although there is some argument over balancing issues within the AP system (mostly weapon RoF/RoA).

I know I'm probably in the minority here but I think tying AP to ROF is a mistake. The physical act of pulling a trigger is no different on an AR-15 than it is on an Ingram MAC-10. The number of bullets they spit out certainly is though! A closer example: Your character wants to long burst (Full auto) an M-16 (An autogun) while his partner does the same thing with an M-134 Minigun (An assault cannon). They will both fire for one second. Why would the AP costs be different? I would have preferred saying 1 AP for single shot, 2 for Semi auto and 3 for full auto. This would show an AP cost for the additional time required without taking away the fact that different weapons have different levels of effectiveness.

By moving from Full/Half actions to AP, FFG were also able to do away with swift/lightning attack, semi-/full-auto, reactions (as a separate thing), and probably some other things. Overall I'd say things turned out simpler than in DH1, although there is some argument over balancing issues within the AP system (mostly weapon RoF/RoA).

I know I'm probably in the minority here but I think tying AP to ROF is a mistake. The physical act of pulling a trigger is no different on an AR-15 than it is on an Ingram MAC-10. The number of bullets they spit out certainly is though! A closer example: Your character wants to long burst (Full auto) an M-16 (An autogun) while his partner does the same thing with an M-134 Minigun (An assault cannon). They will both fire for one second. Why would the AP costs be different? I would have preferred saying 1 AP for single shot, 2 for Semi auto and 3 for full auto. This would show an AP cost for the additional time required without taking away the fact that different weapons have different levels of effectiveness.

Uhm.. What exactly is the functional difference between paying more AP for a higher rate of fire, and paying more AP for actions with a higher rate of fire?

- I mean, beyond that your/the old way is very, very slightly more complicated (taking an action and then determining RoF vs. just determining RoF), and that it is less granular (cue the lightning swift nonsense MaliciousOnion mentioned?

By moving from Full/Half actions to AP, FFG were also able to do away with swift/lightning attack, semi-/full-auto, reactions (as a separate thing), and probably some other things. Overall I'd say things turned out simpler than in DH1, although there is some argument over balancing issues within the AP system (mostly weapon RoF/RoA).

I know I'm probably in the minority here but I think tying AP to ROF is a mistake. The physical act of pulling a trigger is no different on an AR-15 than it is on an Ingram MAC-10. The number of bullets they spit out certainly is though! A closer example: Your character wants to long burst (Full auto) an M-16 (An autogun) while his partner does the same thing with an M-134 Minigun (An assault cannon). They will both fire for one second. Why would the AP costs be different? I would have preferred saying 1 AP for single shot, 2 for Semi auto and 3 for full auto. This would show an AP cost for the additional time required without taking away the fact that different weapons have different levels of effectiveness.

Uhm.. What exactly is the functional difference between paying more AP for a higher rate of fire, and paying more AP for actions with a higher rate of fire?

- I mean, beyond that your/the old way is very, very slightly more complicated (taking an action and then determining RoF vs. just determining RoF), and that it is less granular (cue the lightning swift nonsense MaliciousOnion mentioned?

Simple. Some weapons have an in inherently different rate of fire but do not present any greater difference of effort to employ them. That's why I listed the examples I did. A Minigun with a ROF of THOUSANDS of rounds per minute is no different than firing a .50 cal. BMG (Which actually have a pretty slow rate of fire despite what the movies always show!). 1-2 seconds of sustained autofire is the same either way! If you tried to tie AP to a Miniguns rate of fire you could never convincingly make it work! BTW; I never had a problem with the lightning/swift attack rules so I don't really see it as nonsense!

Simple. Some weapons have an in inherently different rate of fire but do not present any greater difference of effort to employ them.

I'm not feeling to well and haven't slept in a couple of days, so it's very possible I'm being thick as a brick, but what I'm seeing is this:

The existing AP system behaves as if the time it takes to pull the trigger depends on how many bullets are going to come flying out the barrel. How high your rate of fire is depends on how many AP you spend.

Your alternative AP system behaves as if the time it takes to pull the trigger depends on how many bullets are going to come flying out the barrel. Buying combat actions that produce higher rates of fire, costs more AP.

The only significant difference between the two that I can see, is that the existing system lets you spend AP directly on your RoF, while your alternative only lets you indirectly spend AP on your RoF.

In other words, they look like the same thing, except the existing system is more granular, which means it can support a larger catalogue of guns before some of them end up functionally identical.

...

I totally get what your objection to the existing AP system is, but assuming I'm not being extremely stupid right now, your proposed fix doesn't address the issue at all. A proper fix would be cool, though. But as I'm trying to imagine what such a thing might be, I can't help seeing half the character builds & half the guns coming apart at the seams.

I guess maybe the problem is that as nice as realism is, sometimes it gets in the way of the unrealistic stuff that most of us would like to keep. For example, I have no real doubt a guy with a reasonably accurate high RoF rifle thingy* would beat a dual-pistol guy 99 times out of a 100 out in the real world. But I'd like those odds to be more or less even in the system.

Honestly I think house-ruling energy would be better spend getting rid of the fixed AP pool, and replacing it with a variable one. Right now a Howling Banshee essentially uses a hacked version of the AP system, because the AP system can't scale. A system that could scale, could replace most of the talents, special rules and whatever that currently applies to a Howling Banshee, with a few additional AP. Functionally the same, but much easier to run.

- Of course, it's not quite as simple as that. Things never are. But assuming we make the switch to 2e, we'll definitely have a go at it.

BTW; I never had a problem with the lightning/swift attack rules so I don't really see it as nonsense!

The rules are very clunky. So much so they're barely fit for human interpretation. I'm not trying to exaggerate the issue, DH, RT & BC all got the rules on this confused in the dead tree version of the cores. I'm guessing DW did too, but I can't be bothered to check. Anyway, the point is that if the publisher consistently can't figure out their own multi-attack mechanics, it really shouldn't surprise anyone that a lot of players kind of choke on them too.

The old edition had a little bit much of stuff like that, actually. I was just about to compare the multi-attack mechanics to the infamously clunky grapple mechanics of D&D, but DH1e's grapple mechanics are probably at least as clunky as anything D&D has ever inflicted on its players

*I don't know anything about real world guns. I mean, I do know what a minigun is, but only because I've watched Predator waaay too many times

What was clunky about "lightning attack" and "swift attack" in the original Dark Heresy? You took a full action to get 2 or 3 attacks, depending on the talent you had. Seems fairly straight forward to me.

Ok, OW and BC's newer incarnation of the attacks, making them like full auto and semi auto ranged attacks, that was a bit clunky. Oh, and I can certainly accept two-weapon wielding has had some element of uncertainty in all the rules sets.

The original multi-attack melee talents, on the other hand, never caused any confusion to me.

Simple. Some weapons have an in inherently different rate of fire but do not present any greater difference of effort to employ them.

I'm not feeling to well and haven't slept in a couple of days, so it's very possible I'm being thick as a brick, but what I'm seeing is this:

The existing AP system behaves as if the time it takes to pull the trigger depends on how many bullets are going to come flying out the barrel. How high your rate of fire is depends on how many AP you spend.

Your alternative AP system behaves as if the time it takes to pull the trigger depends on how many bullets are going to come flying out the barrel. Buying combat actions that produce higher rates of fire, costs more AP.

The only significant difference between the two that I can see, is that the existing system lets you spend AP directly on your RoF, while your alternative only lets you indirectly spend AP on your RoF.

In other words, they look like the same thing, except the existing system is more granular, which means it can support a larger catalogue of guns before some of them end up functionally identical.

...

Not trying to be arrogant here either, but I do know a thing or two about guns and combat (Being former military and a practicing Martial artist.). I do realize that some trade offs have to be made between real world fieldcraft and cinematic style combat! That being said, the current AP system essentially makes the argument of 1 shot (bullet) equals one AP with a fully automatic weapon! That's ridiculous! Even in your Predator movie: When Jesse Ventura lets loose with the minigun it's a whole different world of scary from when the rest of the team is using various assault rifles and light machine guns. Since the primary difference between the weapons in the movie is rate of fire (The weapon in the movie: The XM-214 Microgun; uses a 5.56mm round same as an M-16.) it boggles the mind as to how the AP system would deal with that! The reason I mentioned the method I did was that it is extremely difficult to precisely control the number of rounds fired in ANY fully automatic weapon! What you are left with in real life options are single shot (Obvious though some machine guns like the M60 actually cannot do this!), Short burst (A 3-5 round burst taking less than a second.). And Long bursts (Taking a second or more.). Sound familiar? It should! The OW/Black crusade rules were actually pretty close to spot on when applied to what really happens! This was also true of the Lightning/swift attack rule. When a student in any martial art starts gaining skill in that art they learn to be able to throw a "Flurry" of blows at their opponent. They also realize that this comes that this comes at a penalty to accuracy and force delivered. Again this was fairly aptly simulated in the OW/BC ruleset but not here in DH2!

If this all sounds condescending I apologise in advance! It's not meant that way. You mentioned that you didn't know much about real world weapons so I am trying to illustrate the in-game comparisons.

If this all sounds condescending I apologise in advance! It's not meant that way. You mentioned that you didn't know much about real world weapons so I am trying to illustrate the in-game comparisons.

Nothing to apologise for. On the contrary, thank you for being helpful with my lack of knowledge, and for being nice about it

You make a good point that very high rates of fire get weird if you have to pay for the directly with AP. Paying for a Full Auto Burst combat Action instead, means the weapon RoF can be anything.

I think you may have changed my mind. Functionally both approaches makes you burn a similar chunk of AP, and inflict a similar number of hits (Sort of. DH2b seems to have cut the RoF's in half, or doubled the AP cost depending on how you look at it). Mechanically, it seems like a pretty innocent little hack. Though I can't help picture a DH1e critter with Unnatural BS firing an Assault Cannon with a RoF of 250 LoL!

But your way may offer more verisimilitude. A RAW Heavy Stubber has a RoF of 3 and a Clip of 60. But going by the fluff it should probably have a ROF somewhere around 100, and a Clip of at least several hundred. With your hack, it can have that.

The problem is, if you have a weapon with a realistic RoF of 2,000rpm, as with the M134 Minigun (comparable to the assault cannon, which is not in 2e), a one second burst would dish out ~33 rounds. A RoF that high in this game would be pointless, because you could never get that many DoS, and therefore hits. Even assuming you somehow could get thirty DoS, I doubt many people would want to work out damage for thirty hits.

The problem is, if you have a weapon with a realistic RoF of 2,000rpm, as with the M134 Minigun (comparable to the assault cannon, which is not in 2e), a one second burst would dish out ~33 rounds. A RoF that high in this game would be pointless, because you could never get that many DoS, and therefore hits. Even assuming you somehow could get thirty DoS, I doubt many people would want to work out damage for thirty hits.

Just keep the current limitation on the number of hits you can inflict. Without checking, I think it's 12 in DH2b & 10 in OW. Even without those limits, tests can at most have a +60 modifier, so that's a theoretical limit of 16 hits.

The problem is, if you have a weapon with a realistic RoF of 2,000rpm, as with the M134 Minigun (comparable to the assault cannon, which is not in 2e), a one second burst would dish out ~33 rounds. A RoF that high in this game would be pointless, because you could never get that many DoS, and therefore hits. Even assuming you somehow could get thirty DoS, I doubt many people would want to work out damage for thirty hits.

Again; Trade-offs. In DW the damage value of the Astartes assault cannon was 3d10+6. assuming they meant it to use roughly the same ammo as an autogun (Assume 7.62mm nato for sake of argument) that is the rough equivalent of getting hit twice in the same location with each hit! additionally, the ROF was a whopping 10 so you were getting the equivalent damage potential of 20-25 hits ! That sounds a lot like a minigun! I'm not looking for an exact representation of a modern real world weapon! I'm looking for the game to reflect a similar "feel" for using a comparable weapon in a science fantasy situation!

If this all sounds condescending I apologise in advance! It's not meant that way. You mentioned that you didn't know much about real world weapons so I am trying to illustrate the in-game comparisons.

Nothing to apologise for. On the contrary, thank you for being helpful with my lack of knowledge, and for being nice about it

You make a good point that very high rates of fire get weird if you have to pay for the directly with AP. Paying for a Full Auto Burst combat Action instead, means the weapon RoF can be anything.

I think you may have changed my mind. Functionally both approaches makes you burn a similar chunk of AP, and inflict a similar number of hits (Sort of. DH2b seems to have cut the RoF's in half, or doubled the AP cost depending on how you look at it). Mechanically, it seems like a pretty innocent little hack. Though I can't help picture a DH1e critter with Unnatural BS firing an Assault Cannon with a RoF of 250 LoL!

But your way may offer more verisimilitude. A RAW Heavy Stubber has a RoF of 3 and a Clip of 60. But going by the fluff it should probably have a ROF somewhere around 100, and a Clip of at least several hundred. With your hack, it can have that.

Thank you for not misreading me . The M240g is a pretty close analogy to a heavy stubber. It's rate of fire IRL is approx. 750 rpm this works out to a rate of 12 for a one second burst! OW lists a ROF of 8 for a heavy stubber so it's actually pretty close! The only stats I found to be off were weapon weights. For example: An AK-47 (Arguably the most popular assault rifle in the world today and one of the heavier ones) weighs in at about 4kg fully loaded. The autogun in both DH2b and OW list as 5kg. This may not seem like much but when carrying a full combat load it makes a difference! The difference in melee weapons is even more off the charts! A Sword in DH2b is supposed to weigh 4kg. You (Or I) probably couldn't swing something that heavy in one hand with any sort of control. (Imagine trying to take the above mentioned AK-47 by the end of the barrel and trying to hit someone with it!) In reality; Longswords (The classic one handed weapon) typically weigh in at just over 1 kg. That's a pretty significant difference!

A weapon with a RoF of 3 in the 2e rules (ie. Heavy Stubber) could have a RoA of 9 with only 3AP spent, leaving 1 for a reaction. This isn't far off your example, and not too different from 1e in its result. Increasing the damage to represent more bullets being fired effectively eliminates the argument for higher (realistic) RoF.

True enough! I was reading it wrong! I thought the ROF was referring to AP per shot! It's the other way round. That means our hypothetical minigun would have a rate of fire of approx. 8 or 2 with a damage rtg. of 3d10+3. Am I correct?

A RoF of 3 would be fitting. 3d10 or so damage seems to be in line with previous editions, as well as Storm and/or Tearing. Truly a fearsome weapon.

By moving from Full/Half actions to AP, FFG were also able to do away with swift/lightning attack, semi-/full-auto, reactions (as a separate thing), and probably some other things. Overall I'd say things turned out simpler than in DH1, although there is some argument over balancing issues within the AP system (mostly weapon RoF/RoA).

I know I'm probably in the minority here but I think tying AP to ROF is a mistake. The physical act of pulling a trigger is no different on an AR-15 than it is on an Ingram MAC-10. The number of bullets they spit out certainly is though! A closer example: Your character wants to long burst (Full auto) an M-16 (An autogun) while his partner does the same thing with an M-134 Minigun (An assault cannon). They will both fire for one second. Why would the AP costs be different? I would have preferred saying 1 AP for single shot, 2 for Semi auto and 3 for full auto. This would show an AP cost for the additional time required without taking away the fact that different weapons have different levels of effectiveness.

You are misunderstanding ROF and AP. ROF doesn't refer to the AP cost of holding the trigger for 1 second, it refers to how many shots each gun fires in that second.

If one gun can fire 60 rounds per minute, and another gun fires 120, then the second gun will have twice the ROF of the first. It will still cost the same AP to hold the trigger on each down for a second, but the second gun spits out more bullets.

What do the Rules as Written state about weapon Rate of Fire? For example, if a weapon has a RoF of 3, and you spend 3 AP, does that mean that you could fire up to 3 shots/hits or up to 9 shots/hits. Regardless, if the result of the previous calculation is 3 shots/hits, does that mean that I'm rolling for 3 separate attacks or roll once and get 1 hit per degree of success up to 3?

RoF is how many shots go out per AP spent. RoF 3 sends out 3 shots per AP, so in your example it would send 9 shots for 3 AP spent. These shots each count as 1 ammo spent. You make a single attack roll. For each degree of success, you cause a Hit, which you roll damage for (each hit rolls damage separately). You may cause a number of these hits equal to the number of shots (so in our example we can make up to 9 hits on a single attack).

Another thing to keep in mind is that this all counts as a single attack. That means even if you las 9 hits and each does enough damage to cause a wound, you won't add the +5 on the wound table for each of the wounds until the next attack.

Make sense?

Another thing to keep in mind is that this all counts as a single attack. That means even if you las 9 hits and each does enough damage to cause a wound, you won't add the +5 on the wound table for each of the wounds until the next attack.

Just to be clear, any and all successful hits from the same attack only counts as 1 wound. FX, a target that has just been damaged 9 times by a single attack, only suffers a +5 modifier on the wound table for future attacks, not a +45 modifier.

Though admittedly, a +45 modifier might be fun. Hmm... Maybe there's some way to houserule it in a way that isn't game wrecking.

Nope. Here's an email from Tim that clarifies it pretty well.

Hi! Yeah, my wording wasn't too clear.

In each attack, any wounds caused in that attack do not add +5 to results looked up results within that attack. They only use any pluses the target had from previous attacks, but each one does add +5 or +10 for RF rolls to they can add up to make the next attack pretty nasty.

In your example, the autogun attack would add +15 to the next attack's results. But each result looked up in that autogun attack would only use any pluses from any previous attacks; you would not add +5 to the second wound result, then +10 to the third wound result.

So working out a series of attacks:

Attack #1 causes a wound. Target is at +5 to next wound table result.

Attack #2 causes three wounds. Each is looked up with +5 to the table, and after this target is at +20 on table results.

Attack #3 causes one wound, with +20 on table

This help? And no worries on asking for clarifications, this really helps us to make a better game. Everything is obviously clear to us, having been involved with it for a long time now, so it's vital we write rules for everyone else who isn't sitting around the office here immersed in it

Tim Huckelbery

RPG Producer

Fantasy Flight Games

[email protected]

Visit us at http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/

I understand how this would be easier to handle, but it means that focusing fire and dual wielding are that much better than all other attack options since they have the potential to stack up a bunch of wounds and then take advantage of the +5 per wound with the next attack damage roll.

I think I would prefer that a high RoF weapon like a heavy bolter could rack up enough damage to end an elite or master without requiring another attack after the fact (the infamous child with a pin example).