Assault cannons say hello.

Oh year, I'd forgotten about those. (Been a while since I played TT). Thing is though, heavy stubbers, et al. still aren't actually matching up with the real world weapons we act as though they should to. When we complain about not being able to lay down a hail of mass fire from a heavy stubber, this is a weapon which gets off around ten bullets over five seconds. Hardly a modern day machine gun.

Even those assault cannons are firing ridiculously over the top big shells, if I remember rightly.

If I recall, the DW rules for assault cannons did give them the Storm quality. Which mechanically, feels like a solid representation of that high rate of fire weaponry.

Reread of the errata, and well, I'm wrong, they have devastating, which is more of an abstraction for that system.

I have to wonder to what extent RoF is meant to actually model real world rate of fire. Clip size and RoF of the heavier weapons could well be an abstraction.

I have to believe they've built in some sort of notion of firing in bursts with the listed RoF.

That 4 AP spent on an attack doesn't actually represent the "true RoF" of a weapon. Just a maximum rate with which any sane person would fire the weapon.

I have to believe they've built in some sort of notion of firing in bursts with the listed RoF.

That 4 AP spent on an attack doesn't actually represent the "true RoF" of a weapon. Just a maximum rate with which any sane person would fire the weapon.

Sane? 40K? Even on the rare occasion my players are rational, their characters seldom are.

I feel like handling 20 shots per burst would just be an incredibly painful task for players, so abstracting it down to say, 5, is a lot more reasonable.

It'd be nice if it was explicitly stated that it IS an abstraction though.

I don't think it is an abstraction, at least in most cases. However, it doesn't mean that an autogun is limited to 12 rounds in a 5 second time period, just that with everything else going on it is an established part of the system that the PC is not actually firing full auto for the entire 5 seconds. Each AP could represent a burst of fire instead.

WH40K has plenty of weapons with very high rates of fire. I think I claimed Assault Cannons fire 3,000 rounds per minute, but on second thought I believe it is actually 8,000. It and a small pile of other rapid fire weapons had rates of fire listed in some of the older wargame material, and possibly in Space Hulk or Space Crusade as well. If I remember where to look, I'll post it here. In the mean time, you guys can fairly safely assume most shooty weapons are meant shoot much faster than the WH40KRPGs weapon profiles indicate. As much as a hundred times faster.

I don't think it is an abstraction, at least in most cases. However, it doesn't mean that an autogun is limited to 12 rounds in a 5 second time period, just that with everything else going on it is an established part of the system that the PC is not actually firing full auto for the entire 5 seconds. Each AP could represent a burst of fire instead.

DH2b handles everything up to and including repeating crossbows really well. Because fundamentally, the system's architecture comes from a fantasy game. So yeah, it's an abstraction, though one born out of necessity. Imagine the outrage if DH2b didn't use the same resolution mechanics, general stats and value ranges. Not that I'd complain, that's exactly what I hoped DH2b wouldn't do. But imagine the outrage if it was even less backwards compatible than it is.

I suppose it could also be that the designers feel just a little bit too god-like and have decided to base the action system on what they think people's PCs should be doing in the fiction, because us silly people who play the game obviously aren't competent to.. you know.. play the game. But I prefer to think the best of people, so I very much doubt it. Even if this is the case, though, it's not a decision they had much control over if they wanted the new system to stay anything like the old one. And they obviously did, for reasons of fan service I imagine (but then, why make a new edition? FFG people I know I'm pretty strange & stuffs, but I think you are too, a little).

All that stuff aside, Radwraith had a neat solution to this, if you're inclined to correct a lot of weapon profiles:

Introduce the Semi- & Full-Auto Burst actions from Only War.

AP spend on an action multiplies the weapon's RoF as normal.

Weapons can then have fiction friendly "uses X ammo" values for Semi- & Full-Auto, as well as a fiction friendly clip size.

It's quite a lot of work for very little, but I'm fairly certain it won't break anything.