I think its important to bear in mind that a base autogun and a base lasgun are similar in performance, its only when you add special ammo onto auto weapons that they excel. And you can add mods onto lasguns too, so they CAN compete.

But guess what, las-weapons are cheap to manufacture and maintain and are thusly produced in the trillions of units to equip the countless forces of the imperium. Those forces with no technical aptitude, who often don't have the resources or time to wait on bulky specialized ammunition to arrive at wherever they are operating.

I mean if funding and resources wasn't an issue then all of the forces of mankind would be equipped with boltguns and power swords. But it is an issue, and when resources get stretched thin and supply lines broken i would much rather my forces be equipped with rugged lasguns over autoguns that may well do a bit more damage but will jam more often and run out of ammo far quicker.

Also bear in mind that an average Imperial guard 'unit' is the platoon which will have anywhere from 15 to 50 or more men, who will each have a lasgun of some sort, who can each burst fire for MANY shots. Many will miss, but they will supress an enemy. Some will hit and of those hits some will critically hit (which always does a minimum of 1 point of damage - even to a space marine, a daemon or whatever ).

So yeah, the lasgun really is represented quite well in RT.

I'm a bit curious why you'd even want to bother with it. Las weapons are so **** I can't imagine why you'd willingly choose to use them, even Hell weapons are essentially crippled by the toughness bonuses of most RT characters and NPCs despite having really good penetration. Buy a bolter instead and benefit from the tearing rule, tearing is badass and non-archeotech bolters pretty easy to get ahold of.

That's why after modifying the Hellgun to give it accurate, you modify the power pack to a "hotshot hotshot" power pack, which has fewers lasers in it but they give tearing. Suddenly we have 3 more pen one less damage solo bolt gun

I don't see why giving it tearing is any more difficult than giving it accurate.

Of course, given that nearly everything else about the Long Las is identical between Only War and Rogue Trader, you can always houserule the Long Las in RT to have Felling (which removes one multiplier of Unnatural Toughness), seeing as the Only War version has Felling (2) (which removes two levels of it). I think the main reason it doesn't have that in Rogue Trader is that the Felling rule doesn't exist in the core rulebook for Rogue Trader. Or if the jump from minus two levels to minus a single multiplier seems a bit much, you could say Felling on a Long Las reduces the multiplier by x0.5, rounding down the resulting toughness bonus. That bit of conversion difficulty may be the other reason Rogue Trader doesn't have Felling on a Long Las.

A similar argument could also be applied for the Lascannon having Proven (3) in Rogue Trader, with no conversion difficulties like the above. And frankly if someone manages to get their hands on a Lascannon and all the prequisites to use it effectively, they probably deserve the Proven (3) for that weapon.

Of course, given that nearly everything else about the Long Las is identical between Only War and Rogue Trader, you can always houserule the Long Las in RT to have Felling (which removes one multiplier of Unnatural Toughness), seeing as the Only War version has Felling (2) (which removes two levels of it). I think the main reason it doesn't have that in Rogue Trader is that the Felling rule doesn't exist in the core rulebook for Rogue Trader. Or if the jump from minus two levels to minus a single multiplier seems a bit much, you could say Felling on a Long Las reduces the multiplier by x0.5, rounding down the resulting toughness bonus. That bit of conversion difficulty may be the other reason Rogue Trader doesn't have Felling on a Long Las.

A similar argument could also be applied for the Lascannon having Proven (3) in Rogue Trader, with no conversion difficulties like the above. And frankly if someone manages to get their hands on a Lascannon and all the prequisites to use it effectively, they probably deserve the Proven (3) for that weapon.

Felling could just be re-written to apply to Toughness Bonus granted by Unnatural Toughness. That means that if someone has Rogue Trader Unnatural Toughness (x2) and a Toughness Bonus of 4 (now 8), and is shot at by Felling (2), it counts the Toughness Bonus as 6.

If a weapon has Felling (5), it would reduce the Toughness Bonus to 4.

I think that would be a neater way to do it, and honestly, it should've been like that from the start, reducing Toughness Bonus, not just Unnatural Toughness, down to the target's natural Toughness Bonus.

What's the deal with felling? I don't get how a weapon removes toughness but doesn't have penetration. All the extra damage of an accurate weapon is given by the accurate trait to show that the shot is really well placed. Is Felling saying that unnatural toughness monsters have weaker weak points?

What's the deal with felling? I don't get how a weapon removes toughness but doesn't have penetration. All the extra damage of an accurate weapon is given by the accurate trait to show that the shot is really well placed. Is Felling saying that unnatural toughness monsters have weaker weak points?

...it seems a bit silly, yeah, especially when it comes to weapons that get Felling without having a single point of Penetration.

Doesn't like, Ascension have rules for how Felling interacts with old-school unnatural toughness? Pretty sure it reduces your unnatural toughness multiplier by one per rank in felling. A Felling (1) weapon would turn UTx3 into UTx2, for example.