(A spin-off of the Flame thread.)

A while ago, on the Deathwatch forum, after many many questions about how on earth Devastating actually works, the following clarification was given by FFG:

"As a weapon with the Blast Quality inflicts a number of hits to a horde equal to its Blast value and a Weapon with the Devastating Quality reduces the Magnitude of a horde on a "per hit" basis, they do stack. Therefore a Blast (5) weapon which also has Devastating (2) would reduce the Magnitude of a horde by 15 points (5 for the Blast rating, and an additional 10 for Devastating)

Thank you for your question and happy gaming!
--
Tim Flanders
Associate RPG Producer
Fantasy Flight Games"

OK fine. This means that a frag missile (Blast 5, X damage, Devastating 1) will do 5 hits +1 for X +(6 x 1) for Devastating = 12 Mag Damage,.This makes it a good weapon against hordes -- better than a heavy stubber, say, which is as it should be.

But here we have Tome of Blood with the Salvo of Skulls:

Blast (25), X damage type, Devastating (15).

This thing does 25 hits + 1 for X = 26 hits + (26 x 15!!!!!!!) for Devastating = 416!!!!! Mag damage.

Something here is very very wrong.

Blast (25), X damage type, Devastating (15).

This thing does 25 hits + 1 for X = 26 hits + (26 x 15!!!!!!!) for Devastating = 416!!!!! Mag damage.

Something here is very very wrong.

But here we have Tome of Blood with the Salvo of Skulls:

Look, why do people keep assuming the line authors actually know the rules, even less keep track of what the FAQs say?

I mean, it'd be nice, sure, but you really can't expect that sort of thing, right? And then the rigorous playtesting...

Oh, sorry. Forgot to put in my <sarcasm />-tags there.

Either ignore how it works according to Tim Flanders or ban the Doom Blaster for being unbalanced.

I think it's pretty likely that the frag missile has its current form because of this issue. Old Frag Missile (in Deathwatch pre-errata) was Blast (8) Devastating (1), which equals 8 + 1 for X = 9 + (9 x 1) = 18 (too much?), reduced in later games to Blast (5) Devastating (1) (5 + 1 for X = 6 + (6 x 1) = 12).

If you simply add Devastating ONCE, the frag missile becomes kind of silly since it does a whopping 5 + 1 + 1 = 7 Mag damage maximum (wow!), a whole 2 larger than a frag grenade, and it would be more logical to just make the blast radius 1 larger.

Anyway I think that we have are two (or more) different authors writing up things using different interpretations of the rules.

EDIT: here's an old DW discussion of them (started by me): http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/59641-questions-on-horde-damage-and-weapon-qualities/

And another one (not mine): http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/42723-the-devastating-quality/

Devastating is a broken weapons quality is my conclusion. Too high scaling.

If I'm not mistaken, the Doom Blaster is a master-level NPC, equipped with four heavy mortars. That it can destroy a very large horde with a single shot doesn't seem particularly unbalanced. It also isn't particularly game-breaking.

As an NPC, it's not the sort of things players are going to be able to have direct control over. It seems like it might play a role in a scenario where the players are controlling large numbers of minions, or in a scene where two large hordes are duking it out.

Against PC's, the devastating quality is meaningless--it's not like Black Crusade is going to see players' cohesion drop.

In other words, devastating works just fine, as far as I can tell.