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/

Do you know what this means ?

That if the weapon can't kill an injured target with a single shot, it can't kill the target with a long burst.

It means that no matter how many shots you put into an attack, it is impossible to kill anyone with the first burst from most weapons unless you hit an instant death rule (target only has 2 wounds or RF is instant kill). Even if the target has no armor and no toughness to soak the damage.

Here is how much damage you need to deal to get an instant kill for each location and damage type:

Energy: Limb - 29 Body - 26 Head - 28

Impact: Limb - 30 Body - 31 Head: 28

Rending: Limb 30, Body 31, Head 29

Which means that the following weapons are the only weapons capable of killing an unarmored character with a Tb of 0 in the first burst:

Autocannon. To kill with a limb shot it needs to roll 20 on the 2d10, to kill with a headshot it only needs 18.

Meltagun. But only with a body shot and a roll of 10 on the 1d10

Plasma gun and Plasma pistol. If you roll high or use overcharge with a high Ib.

Meltabomb.

For melee weapons, I'll exclude the ones that can need an Ab or Sb above 10 to kill.

Power Fist. To get an instant kill with a damage roll of 10, you need an SB of 10 for the limbs, 8 for the body or 9 for the head.

Warhammer: 10Sb for the limb, 11Sb for the body, 8Sb for the head

Force Staff: The Sb the warhammer needs is the psy level the force staff needs for the kill shot.

Force sword: A limb shot needs 19 from SB+psy level. Body needs 20, head needs 17.

Hunting Lance. A 3d10 weapon energy weapon. So just use the numbers above to see what roll is needed for each location.

Yeah, I have been playing with the wounds getting steadily more grievous even within a single attack and will continue to do so. This is silly. I understand and like that one-shotting is much harder to accomplish, but making it arbitrarily impossible for all intents and purposes is not the feel I want for 40k.

Gonna agree here, if i'm swinging a meltagun/autocannon/etc around i'm going to **** well expect more than a grot to explode into giblits when I shoot at it.

Don't forget the addition to spectacular Demise if damage is double or greater than defense value. That and critical hits. Master NPCs immune to that you don't want one shotted anyway.

Guess I was wrong then.

As Nimsim just pointed out, though, basic stuff is not all that hard to kill. The minion material has defence values up to 6, so unless your acolyte is armed with throwing knives and doesn't know how to use them, you'll have at least some chance of one-shotting them.

Instant death only works with unimportant actors, because if there's any chance at all that an actor can explode when it shouldn't, then it absolutely will happen all the time, no matter how astronomical the odds are.

Speaking of which, there should probably be a mention in the encounter section about not ever throwing combat encounters at the group if someone is out of FP.

I was aware of the spectacular demise rules, they aren't especially relevant here since two wounds also instantly kills novices and novices wound effects need not even be tracked as a consequence. The question of how wounds stack up is purely a matter of elites, masters, and PCs. My opinion remains, I think stacking each wound within an attack makes more sense and has a better, grittier feel and will continue to run my games that way.

The Mr.Gibblets rule applies to elites too, I think.

As for wound mod stacking, doesn't it make high-RoA waaay too good?

I'm having trouble seeing how low RoF weapons can stand up to it. Even an autopistol starts getting very scary if you only have 1-2 points of armour and the one shooting at you is using a red dot sight or similar. 4DoS just isn't all that unlikely, and d0 I is enough to hurt most things about half the time.

Which would you prefer:

- Someone dies after being hit by a long burst of autopistol fire.

- Someone takes 6 hits from a 2 AP heavy bolter burst. He lives, then explodes violently when someone punches him in the chest.

Because the second is what not stacking the penalties will cause every single time. Oh and the high ROF weapons are still better because the low ROF weapons can't reliably score a kill unless something softens the target up first.

ROF <1 weapons have other problems steming from the low ROF. Like an autogun being more accurate than a sniper rifle unless the target is outside autogun range. It seems better to just increase the ROF to 1, then worry about balancing them than try to make the low ROF work.

I'm having trouble seeing how low RoF weapons can stand up to it. Even an autopistol starts getting very scary if you only have 1-2 points of armour and the one shooting at you is using a red dot sight or similar. 4DoS just isn't all that unlikely, and d0 I is enough to hurt most things about half the time.

Don't know about other low ROF weapons, but I've run a bunch of very simple combats and melta guns compete with high ROF weapons quite well. They kill just as fast in terms of rounds (usually, 2-3 attacks) and have a decent shot of *effectively* one-shotting an opponent. By "effectively," I mean causing blindness or stun or some other consequence that most likely makes the opponent a sitting duck on the next turn. To actually cause death with one hit is still pretty tough.

I think it's worth remembering that someone just firing a weapon with Ballistics 60 or so is actually on the "unskilled" end of the game's spectrum, even as they spray lots of bullets around. High skill with a gun is reflected in having a bunch of talents as well as the actual Ballistics characteristic or a big gun. If you consider talents such as crippling shot or eye of vengeance, it becomes considerably easier to one-shot an opponent. Since having EoV means you'll be firing with CS every time, a one-shot attempt by an actually highly-skilled gunman looks like this (assume a 1 Dos hit with a sniper rifle):

2d10 base + 5 CS + 9 EoV - 4 (Defense-Pen) = 20 average (up to 30 with a good roll). If it's a limb, that's significant Ballistics decay, which leads to win. If it's a chest hit, it leads to blood loss. If it's a head, that's stunning for a round, which leads to win. Now okay, maybe none of those are *technically* one-shotting, but that's about 7/10 hit locations essentially leading to a win after the first hit.

Now, to put the meltagun in context, it replaces the above 2d10 with 1d10+16, increasing the average damage roll given above by 10...

...Which equals one-shotting.

I almost regret posting up that email, it's only managed to dredge up arguments that were put to bed weeks ago. Generally, while full auto weapons do seem better under these rules, if you run the numbers, lower RoF weapons do balance up well against higher RoF ones, dude to the difference in damage. You're a lot more likely to actually beat armour and toughness with say, a handcannon, when compared to an autopistol. Automatic weapons have more potential to lay on the hurt, but they're more of a risk, unless the enemies you're fighting have very low Defence Values

I meant wound effect stacking within an attack, like Togath talked about above, not the RAW. My apologies for the confusion.

I haven't played the beta, so I'm not exactly well versed in beta's balance or the injury tables, but my impression is actors tend to be out of the fight once they hit around 15-20 on the injury tables.

If we stack wound effects from the same attack, an autopistol becomes lethal. Defence values aren't very high in the game compared to weapon damage, and scoring 4 injuring hits with an autopistol in a single attack isn't all that unlikely. Each wound effect might only be up to 7 + wound effect modifier, but with 4 hits that's a +15 modifier, which basically means whatever you're shooting at is out of the fight.

That's pretty much comparable to a plasma pistol. Actually, I think I'd argue the autopistol is better using this house rule.

To clarify - if I use a weapon with a RoF of 3, and spend 3 AP, I get up to 9 hits. This means that I would need to get 9 Degrees of Success for all of the 9 hits to (potentially) cause a wound, right?

Bingo.

I almost regret posting up that email, it's only managed to dredge up arguments that were put to bed weeks ago. Generally, while full auto weapons do seem better under these rules, if you run the numbers, lower RoF weapons do balance up well against higher RoF ones, dude to the difference in damage. You're a lot more likely to actually beat armour and toughness with say, a handcannon, when compared to an autopistol. Automatic weapons have more potential to lay on the hurt, but they're more of a risk, unless the enemies you're fighting have very low Defence Values

They dont balance this out at all. The autopistol is a bad example as it has the lowest damage of the high RoF weapons.

Take the autogun better - 1d10+3 --> thats with average 9 ussually enough to make a wound. And causing wounds is what makes it dangerous.

High-RoF weapons need to be balanced out by a higher chance of Jamming. That makes sense AND is balanced.

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.

As far as I thought, multi-hits by one attack DO inflict several wounds. No ?

Each HIT can cause a wound and such an attack can have several HITS.

5 hits by auto-fire, which everyone by itself being larger than defence --> 5 wounds --> +25 for future attacks

They dont balance this out at all. The autopistol is a bad example as it has the lowest damage of the high RoF weapons.

Take the autogun better - 1d10+3 --> thats with average 9 ussually enough to make a wound. And causing wounds is what makes it dangerous.

High-RoF weapons need to be balanced out by a higher chance of Jamming. That makes sense AND is balanced.

Each autogun round has only a 4/10 chance to wound a TB4 character in Flak arrmour. I wouldn't call that 'usually enough'.

So, the usual guy has a flak armour ? Where do you usually go to ? The Jericho Reach ?

Other factors like special ammunition was not even a topic yet...

Special ammunition can be applied to lower RoF weapons too so it's largely a moot point.

And yes, Flak is kinda the most mass produced armour in the Imperium, so I figure it's a pretty fair baseline

Special ammunition can be applied to lower RoF weapons too so it's largely a moot point.

And yes, Flak is kinda the most mass produced armour in the Imperium, so I figure it's a pretty fair baseline

For military application, indeed.

But this is not OW, and not a military game.

Even putting enforcer armour would be more common in this scenario, or hive leathers.

Undercover it might be as well regular clothes with armour 1.

Special ammunition in 1 bullet is a different thing as in 5 bullet.

If this ammunition is the drop to create a wound it makes the difference between 1 wound and 5 wounds.

If we stack wound effects from the same attack, an autopistol becomes lethal. Defence values aren't very high in the game compared to weapon damage, and scoring 4 injuring hits with an autopistol in a single attack isn't all that unlikely.

That is not my experience just running mock combats. For a 'fighter' template, Toughness 4 and flack armor is a reasonable starting defense. That's 8 head and 9 everywhere else, against a damage of 1d10 for the autopistol. Most of the hits are going to result in no wound. Just a quick calculation, an autopistol scoring 6 hits has a 48% chance of scoring a wound if you roll an even attack or a 52% chance of scoring a wound if you roll odd (and thus get a head chance). That's assuming 6 hits; with fewer DoS, your odds of getting past their defense go down dramatically. And at that firing rate, you have to stop to reload every third round. Also remember, that's a starting PC. Once they spend some exp on toughness, fuggedaboutit.

Gaunt has a fair point about your average citizen not running around in flack all the time. But let's just say that after running through a couple toy example combats, it wouldn't be the *only* gun my PC carried.

Another issue is what you compare.

If you compare a 1d10+4 singleshot weapon to a 1d10 automatic, of course both are similarly useful.

But deciding if you fire a called shot or autofire with the same weapon isnt even worth the thought - and both should at least be an option that can make sense in certain situations.

Besides - the autopistol is really not a good example as it is the lower end which soon has problem to overcome defence. Take the autogun to get a better view on it - even if also the autogun is not high-end.

Called shot is quite often a great option with any gun if you're facing down a heavily protected enemy with one specific weakpoint, like a lack of a helmet (fairly common in 40k, too).

Eh, I have an arbitrator who quickly ditched his shotgun for a pair of autopistols. he uses them for critseeking. It doesn't matter that they only damage targets on a 9 or a 10 when all you want is a 10 anyway.

Attack with an aim action (or two) and red dot, so a total of 80 or so; of course you also dual wield. Load the guns with frag rounds if at all possible. End result should be somewhere in the ball park of 3-4 hits per gun, maybe less, maybe more. Since they are all magically storm thanks to the not at all difficult to acquire special ammunition you actually have more like 6-8 damage rolls per gun or 12-16 total, let's call it 14. Roll 14d10 and your chance of a crit is really very good.

Obviously evasion or what not knock a few shots off, but the key here is that two wounds kills a novice and a crit kills a novice or an elite. Sure, your guns are empty in a couple of rounds, but they are quick to reload , especially with talents and quick release (free in fact), and extended clips help a lot with that if you only have one of those.

So basically, you pump low cal bullets into the target at a silly rate hoping to hit something vital enough they drop instantly, and your chance of doing so is better than the odds on a sniper rifle with a single shot and similar to one fired twice except you don't need to brace or carry a heavy weapon to get such results.

Obviously this depends on a high BS and is much less useful against high evasion targets, but in terms of making autopistols deadly my point is this, they are not about hurting people unless they are unarmoured, autopistols are about critseeking.

If the DV is 10 or higher though, you're completely out of luck. Still, that is a pretty good point about crit fishing.

Called shot is quite often a great option with any gun if you're facing down a heavily protected enemy with one specific weakpoint, like a lack of a helmet (fairly common in 40k, too).

With most armour, "weak point" means 1 armour less - great effect.