Hey guys,

Just looking at the updates to the armoury rules, and I feel like it's going in the right direction. But I also feel like it has a really long way to go. If you try to compare like things, it's far too easy for players to gain an advantage by certian picks. For example, the lasgun is simply a better weapon than the autogun. A higher damage output (using overcharge) with the same ROF and better availibiliy. Also the sniper rifle and long-las are both over the top powerfull. It's far better for a character in a short ranged firefight to be armed with a long-las, than it is for them to be armed with an autogun.I still don't understand why a long-las is able to deal +9 damage while a hand cannon only does +4.

Also, las weapons are too easy to get ahold of relative to their SP cousins. Why is a shotgun -10, while a lasgun is +10?

Also, hot-shot las weapons are over the top good. The Hotshot-lasgun can quite easily do an effective +9 damage (with a pen 4 to boot). That makes bolters look bad!

Considering the high soak of armour and toughness, I don't feel like the damages of all these weapons are all unreasonable, but the SP equivelents just don't add up.

anyway, I'll attach a rough rebalancing for SP and Las weapons (the way I see it), with changes in red.

You need to keep in mind, that overcharging a weapon limits its RoA to 1.

That balances it out in my oppinion.

Of course, some tweaks are still needed - regarding my oppinion this would be:

- decrease Plasma Weapons Pen to something between 6-8

- increase Boltguns Pen by 1 and set Boltpistols RoF to 1

- give shotgun a unique trait and increase damage

- give the stub revolver a RoF of 1

- give needle weapons a RoF of 1

- give Bows a RoF of Agility-Bonus/2 -2

- let melee weapons scaling that scales by characteristics better scale by characteristic/2 minus one less than now, e.g. WsB-3 becomes WsB/2 -2

- increase the damage of chain weapons by +1

- decrease the damage by improved weapons by -1

- make it impossible for Unarmed to parry and give a penalty to attack enemies who use melee weapons

So long as the 1/2 rate ranged weapons don't at the very minimum do a shot-altering action [aim/called-shot/etc] AS part of the additional AP cost for that shot, or doing stuff like sustained fire-minimum 2AP or the like, any 1/2 short of a lascannon are going to remain worthless. The wounding system is all about how many hits you stacked, and they stack half of a single-shot at BEST. Easy to shield, no harder to dodge.

Plasma pen IS a bit too high, but it also falls flat against "it's not wearing armour it just has tough hide", so it could use felling with half the pen. Put it at 2d10+4E Pen 8 Felling, I'd say.

for melee, either ALL or NO weapons should be attribute based for their rate. WsB/2 -x is far more sensible than "I get 8 swings in a single AP so I'll aim with my second, say, why's that storm-assault-cannon of yours only get six shots per AP out anyways? So slow".

I like it that some weapons scale with characteristics and others dont.

Not all weapons are good for a fast/technical use, but should provide other benefits like more damage.

I am quite ok with some of the weapons having 1/2 . It is a nice way to balance things and I dont feel this is too unbalanced in most cases.

Plasma shojld not also get felling. It is already too strong as is, even with Pen 8.

If felling is considered, damage would need to decrease to 2d10+2 AND Pen should go down to 8 (7 for Pistol).

This would still be very strong, as neither Toughness nor armour provides real protection against it, and even 2d10+2 would be more damage than most other weapons can provide.

Keep in mind that felling is not really the most important stat with the disappearance of unnatural characteristics. Like pen it is not as useful as damage. Ultimately very large values such as ten or so would mean that plasma would maintain effectiveness against virtually all targets but could then be decreased in damage to be less silly against lower end targets since you are trading damage for felling and the felling is wasted past 2-4 on most novices. That said, crits are very valuable since they allow for quick termination of both elites and novices.

One thing to consider would be the annihilation rule for novices. If felling reduces their Tb to 0 and Pen reduces their armor to 0 they have a DV of 0. Does this mean any damage at all kills them from such a weapon? If so felling would actually make plasma sillier v. novices while having a smaller impact on its elite/master performance. Making plasma an auto kill on novices would not bother me particularly, it already has a 30% chance from crits alone, but I feel like however we design plasma the thing that stands out about it should not be its performance v. novice targets.

Ismt felling always rounded up ?

I think felling is now even better than before.

Now you have an effect on all targets, not only those with Unnatural Toughness.

And those who had Unnatural Toughness have higher values now, which are also reduced in a similar way as before, so it is still as powerfull here as it was.

I am not objecting to felling or calling it useless, I am noting some of the mechanical impacts adding it to plasma would have and how that might not give the weapon the "feel" for which we are looking.

if felling halves TB 4 to 2 on top of Pen 6 or 8 or 12 reducing the target's armor to 0 then DV is 2, meaning 3 damage, the minimum possible on Plasma with 3 dice, or even less than the minimum if it were changed to 2d10+2 or something, would be an automatic kill on a novice. The defining feature of plasma should be that it threatens hard targets, not that it is an excellent (or perhaps very reliable) mook smasher.

As it stands, Plasma with felling would be superior to sniper rifles for killing novices and inferior to them for killing elites, given the 60% chance of a crit per shot by a sniper rifle on an elite. That seems weird to me. Maybe not weird enough to throw out the proposed change, I suppose, but weird.

In some ways I sort of like that 3d10 flat damage evokes the instability of Plasma. You cannot count on it like a more reliable weapon, but it can get spectacular results. This makes a kind of visceral sense to me. The pen seems a little high to me, as many have said, but I honestly think that melta pen needs to be boosted.

Having some weapons make armor useless makes armor less of a must have and more of a tactical choice, and that kind of pleases me. Armor is almost always worth having in combat, but trusting to it in the face of plasma or melta weapons is foolish indeed. Is that a bad place to be? I rather think not.

As it currently stands I still see my players use non-plasma weapons even though they have access to and are in possession of plasma pistols and guns. They do it not just for fun, but for subtlety, for certain types of targets, for range, and for longevity (plasma pistols run out of ammo before the end of the average combat, and reloading them is not really a good choice if you have any alternatives). Plasma could use a small change I think, but only a small one.

Many people have compared plasma to melta. It's worth noting that the average damage on melta weapons is actually higher than plasma's average damage. With a buff to melta pen, in light of the melta quality change, the advantage of plasma will be higher possible rate of fire and more crits at the expense of variable damage, close range pen, and the risk of self-immolation. Higher rate of fire is potent and should not be ignored, but still, that seems to be about right.

Keep in mind that no sane character (PC or NPC either one) wants to be fighting anything much more dangerous than autopistols without extensive use of cover. Sure there are situations where it's hard to get to decent cover, but that's one of the things where the party getting surprise (assuming they chose their ground well) has an advantage.