The pen of ONE weapon is not going to affect the game mechanically, but it does insert accuracy into the weapons as far as the lore is concerned.

This is a very silly comment, honestly. If anything, changing ONE weapon is the most risky thing for balance and mechanics. It can easily lead to grossly overpowered or underpowered weapons. You really need to consider the armoury as a whole when making changes if you don't want to create useless or 'must have' items.

To be honest I cannot stand power gamers or those who misuse mechanics. I dont mind an underpowered item that is accurate to an RP concept. This is a roleplaying game not a strategy game to out-think an opponent. We have tabletop for that. Personally a lot of people are complaining about homogenized stuff and no diversity, im saying diversity with lore accuracy is the way to go. If this goes the way of D&D 4th Ed. I will not be playing this system. I loved the original DH, yes it had some mechanical holes. I houseruled to fix it, and in the end I probably will end up doing it with this system. In the end though the system isnt going to be perfect, and its why I normally dont post on these forums. My players enjoy what I do to create a more accurate feel of the world. And in the end thats what matters.

You don't like "power gamers"

You think that people who want every choice to be balanced are power gamers

You know what stories I read about power gamers say? That they took an unbalanced system with some powers or equipment better than others and broke the game. Never never NEVER have I heard about a power get being someone who wants to pick a weird concept and have it be effective. That is not power gaming. That is being creative or having fun with the options. I cannot understand the mindset that thinks mechanics should not support having weird options be effective. Maybe you think that the freedom to play a weird option is reward in and of itself? That indicates you should make the "normal" options more interesting, NOT gimp the weird ones. I'd throw out the possibility that maybe you think your vanilla concept should be the best one by default, which sounds a lot more like a power gamer to me.

Every time someone brings up "power gamers" when someone mentions math, I literally start vomiting blood. It is so **** stupid. Paying attention to math has nothing to do with power gaming; it is how you design a **** game. This is a game. Not a simulation. If you want something fluff based, then play a rules lite narratir system. If you want to simulate a world, then play a war game. TTRPGs are a combination of game and story and you have to pay attention to both ends.

And I'm guessing you don't post on these forums because you don't like doing math in games, which is fine, but you should really kindly continue not posting in the forum about the mechanics and math behind a game. Your opinions are bad and unhelpful.

PS Id be more respectful if you weren't repeating the same awful unreasoned opinions that people keep making. Quickly posting "oh well power gamers..." Is so dumb and intellectually lazy that it doesn't merit respect.

To be honest I cannot stand power gamers or those who misuse mechanics. I dont mind an underpowered item that is accurate to an RP concept. This is a roleplaying game not a strategy game to out-think an opponent. We have tabletop for that. Personally a lot of people are complaining about homogenized stuff and no diversity, im saying diversity with lore accuracy is the way to go. If this goes the way of D&D 4th Ed. I will not be playing this system. I loved the original DH, yes it had some mechanical holes. I houseruled to fix it, and in the end I probably will end up doing it with this system. In the end though the system isnt going to be perfect, and its why I normally dont post on these forums. My players enjoy what I do to create a more accurate feel of the world. And in the end thats what matters.

I see this kind of argument parroted around a lot. The idea that roleplay always trumps mechanics is valid, but why the hell should people be mechanically penalised for going with a particular item or concept? Choices should be balanced mechanically so people CAN choose what's thematically appropriate without gimping themselves.

Stop being condescending, guys. You disagree with him and that's fine but you don't need to disagree with him so vocally. You should say something like, "we value your insightful input" not whatever condescending insults that was.

The pen of ONE weapon is not going to affect the game mechanically, but it does insert accuracy into the weapons as far as the lore is concerned.

This is a very silly comment, honestly. If anything, changing ONE weapon is the most risky thing for balance and mechanics. It can easily lead to grossly overpowered or underpowered weapons. You really need to consider the armoury as a whole when making changes if you don't want to create useless or 'must have' items.

To be honest I cannot stand power gamers or those who misuse mechanics. I dont mind an underpowered item that is accurate to an RP concept. This is a roleplaying game not a strategy game to out-think an opponent. We have tabletop for that. Personally a lot of people are complaining about homogenized stuff and no diversity, im saying diversity with lore accuracy is the way to go. If this goes the way of D&D 4th Ed. I will not be playing this system. I loved the original DH, yes it had some mechanical holes. I houseruled to fix it, and in the end I probably will end up doing it with this system. In the end though the system isnt going to be perfect, and its why I normally dont post on these forums. My players enjoy what I do to create a more accurate feel of the world. And in the end thats what matters.

This is the dumbest **** argument. Allow me to break this down for you.

You don't like "power gamers"

You think that people who want every choice to be balanced are power gamers

You know what stories I read about power gamers say? That they took an unbalanced system with some powers or equipment better than others and broke the game. Never never NEVER have I heard about a power get being someone who wants to pick a weird concept and have it be effective. That is not power gaming. That is being creative or having fun with the options. I cannot understand the mindset that thinks mechanics should not support having weird options be effective. Maybe you think that the freedom to play a weird option is reward in and of itself? That indicates you should make the "normal" options more interesting, NOT gimp the weird ones. I'd throw out the possibility that maybe you think your vanilla concept should be the best one by default, which sounds a lot more like a power gamer to me.

Every time someone brings up "power gamers" when someone mentions math, I literally start vomiting blood. It is so **** stupid. Paying attention to math has nothing to do with power gaming; it is how you design a **** game. This is a game. Not a simulation. If you want something fluff based, then play a rules lite narratir system. If you want to simulate a world, then play a war game. TTRPGs are a combination of game and story and you have to pay attention to both ends.

And I'm guessing you don't post on these forums because you don't like doing math in games, which is fine, but you should really kindly continue not posting in the forum about the mechanics and math behind a game. Your opinions are bad and unhelpful.

No I dont believe those who optimize themselves are power-gamers. And yes I believe an element of balance should be preserved. But when you crunch hard math to see chance and avg dmg on each weapon just so you can have the best weapon the game can offer because we as humans cannot forsee every combination possible. That IS power gaming. I do enjoy math, but getting caught up in the mathematics consistently bogs and slows down the game. We play the game to have fun, and using the ruleset as hard rules that must be rigorously tested loses the sight of the game itself. Hence why I play for a concept. Are some concepts powerful, yes. Are other concepts not so much, yes. In the end we should be rewarded to play any lore accurate concept with the reward of a fun and enjoyable game experience. I agree that some mathematics should be used to preserve an element of balance, but when the crowd goes wild because I want to adjust a pen of a weapon its ridiculous. The mechanics should be rewarding in diversity and accuracy to lore. That is it. Power-Gaming is the concept of number crunching to see what is more powerful without the thought of concept. Which in attempting to find balance we do fyi.

Stop being condescending, guys. You disagree with him and that's fine but you don't need to disagree with him so vocally. You should say something like, "we value your insightful input" not whatever condescending insults that was.

You stated it was stupid and made mocking insults. Its quite simply put to say I disagree because I feel it would mechancially imbalance the game because the scope you are looking at is too narrow.

That too hard for you CPS?

There is nothing wrong with not wanting all weapons to be equally good. For instance, I want a bolt-pistol to be superior to a stub revolver. Both because it reflects the fluff, but also because it gives an opportunity for development in form of gaining more powerful equipment.

You're right, CPS, I really need to be more respectful. After all, the intellectual process only moves forward by holding each idea as equally valid at all times and never refuting them or asking people to look at any previous ideas or findings before throwing out their own idea. I'd hate to be accused of restricting free speech.

There is nothing wrong with not wanting all weapons to be equally good. For instance, I want a bolt-pistol to be superior to a stub revolver. Both because it reflects the fluff, but also because it gives an opportunity for development in form of gaining more powerful equipment.

The balancing factor here is the rarity, though. Bolt pistols are far harder to acquire than stub revolvers.

There is nothing wrong with not wanting all weapons to be equally good. For instance, I want a bolt-pistol to be superior to a stub revolver. Both because it reflects the fluff, but also because it gives an opportunity for development in form of gaining more powerful equipment.

The balancing factor here is the rarity, though. Bolt pistols are far harder to acquire than stub revolvers.

True. I don't want a bolt-pistol to be better in every possible way. A stub revolver would also be easier to hide and attracts less attention.

But when you crunch hard math to see chance and avg dmg on each weapon just so you can have the best weapon the game can offer because we as humans cannot forsee every combination possible. That IS power gaming.

If a player did that, yes, that would approach powergaming.

That isn't what we're talking about at all.

We're talking about your proposed changes to the math of the game's weapon systems. In that context, doing that kind of math is the only appropriate way to make a determination.

You stated it was stupid and made mocking insults. Its quite simply put to say I disagree because I feel it would mechancially imbalance the game because the scope you are looking at is too narrow.

Stop being condescending, guys. You disagree with him and that's fine but you don't need to disagree with him so vocally. You should say something like, "we value your insightful input" not whatever condescending insults that was.

That too hard for you CPS?

I never actually insulted you. I asked if you had done the math to back up your proposed changes, a question you balked at and still have not answered (my money's on 'No').

There is nothing wrong with not wanting all weapons to be equally good. For instance, I want a bolt-pistol to be superior to a stub revolver. Both because it reflects the fluff, but also because it gives an opportunity for development in form of gaining more powerful equipment.

This is what we call equivocation. Equality and balance are not the same thing. It doesn't make sense to compare a bolt pistol to a stub revolver in this way because they're in entirely separate classes. You should be comparing stub guns to laspistols and bolt guns to plasma guns. Things which are roughly equivalent in cost, rarity, and power level. Of course a bolt gun should be better than a stub gun in terms of damage output. It fires tiny missiles.

I think in the first, the weapons need to find values that make them both balanced (in the sense of useable in same way, while still not be overpowered in such a way that people will start only using this kind of weapon) and interesting to use (having some unique aspect).

Second, weapons should try to mirror the fluff as good as possible (but indeed I do have to agree that balance / maths IS also important here).

A skilled developer should find ways to achieve both in an elegant way

Look I am at the point where I dont want the conversation to devolve any further. So.. CPS yes you are correct I have not ran a spread sheet on any of the weapons. Because in general I feel its mostly balanced and I like the way they came up with the numbers. As for my original reason for this forum based on the assumptions of how they came up with Penetration from AP it seems the Hellgun/Hellpistol may have too much Penetration for the weapons lore and the value in which it was originally set in tabletop. I agree that a secular view must be take when adjusting weapons, from the little we have seen in the Beta 2.0, I do not think that adjusting the Pen by 1 will imbalance it. It is clear you disagree. As for Penetration I do believe no real numbers can be ran on it due to the variance of armor. Now I have taken a closer look and Astartes Power Armor is 3+, which means that Power Swords/Hellweapons should bypass it. Which is Armor 8. Plasma which is Pen 8 is AP2... so I think in general an imbalance is here as some weapons which were originally set to bypass these types of armor cannot fully do so anymore. Does this need more research. Of course. Im just seeing if people are seeing what I am seeing. An issue with the Pen on the high Pen weapons. Hellweapons being a more obvious example.

There is nothing wrong with not wanting all weapons to be equally good. For instance, I want a bolt-pistol to be superior to a stub revolver. Both because it reflects the fluff, but also because it gives an opportunity for development in form of gaining more powerful equipment.

This is what we call equivocation. Equality and balance are not the same thing. It doesn't make sense to compare a bolt pistol to a stub revolver in this way because they're in entirely separate classes. You should be comparing stub guns to laspistols and bolt guns to plasma guns. Things which are roughly equivalent in cost, rarity, and power level. Of course a bolt gun should be better than a stub gun in terms of damage output. It fires tiny missiles.

I would expect a plasma gun to be much more expensive, powerful and rare than a bolt gun. Obviously you disagree.

I'd say Plasma Weapons should definitely be more potent, but with more significant drawbacks. Overheating is the obvious solution, if it wasn't so **** wimpy (dropping really shouldn't be an option, in my opinion. Or at least it should require an agility test).

I would expect a plasma gun to be much more expensive, powerful and rare than a bolt gun. Obviously you disagree.

Where's the roll-eyes emoticon? It was a throwaway example. The point was to compare like-to-like. Plasma to melta might be a better comparison.

Just like my point was that everybody may not agree on what weapons are like-to-like.

Lastly from what Ive gathered in general about how the Penatration to AP is ported, here is my basic analysis

I'd say Plasma Weapons should definitely be more potent, but with more significant drawbacks. Overheating is the obvious solution, if it wasn't so **** wimpy (dropping really shouldn't be an option, in my opinion. Or at least it should require an agility test).

I don't know. I've never been a fan of "It's more potent, so it needs drawbacks". IRL there are options that are absolutely better than others, as it should be in game. A Bolter should be better weapon than a Lasgun, so if your players have the influence to get them, the source of ammunition and repairs, and they don't care about people finding people dead by bolter rounds, it's ok for me if ALL of them want one. I'm not going to impose mechanical drawbacks just because I want them to use another weapons. If I find the thing boring (Never happened to me, nope) I'd try some narrative situation. Scarce ammunition or long time far from a proper Tech-smith would make Las and Stub weapons a lot more used.

Similar approach I take with plasma. Through plasma in the tabletop game is like having a suicide device in your hands, uin the fluff and the videogames there has been a lot of examples of characters who used plasma weapons witouth losing hands each ten shots. Plasma weapons are deadly, extremely rare and should have two profiles (Min and Max, I saw it very well), one of them more dangerous, but not dangerous to the point of stupidity. It doesn't have any sense for a weapon to have thousands of years old and being a revered relic of the long time lost wonderful technology and to explode on a 1/50 basis. There would be no plasma weapons at all xD. They would half explode just in the trainings xD

I'd say Plasma Weapons should definitely be more potent, but with more significant drawbacks. Overheating is the obvious solution, if it wasn't so **** wimpy (dropping really shouldn't be an option, in my opinion. Or at least it should require an agility test).

I don't know. I've never been a fan of "It's more potent, so it needs drawbacks". IRL there are options that are absolutely better than others, as it should be in game. A Bolter should be better weapon than a Lasgun, so if your players have the influence to get them, the source of ammunition and repairs, and they don't care about people finding people dead by bolter rounds, it's ok for me if ALL of them want one. I'm not going to impose mechanical drawbacks just because I want them to use another weapons. If I find the thing boring (Never happened to me, nope) I'd try some narrative situation. Scarce ammunition or long time far from a proper Tech-smith would make Las and Stub weapons a lot more used.

Similar approach I take with plasma. Through plasma in the tabletop game is like having a suicide device in your hands, uin the fluff and the videogames there has been a lot of examples of characters who used plasma weapons witouth losing hands each ten shots. Plasma weapons are deadly, extremely rare and should have two profiles (Min and Max, I saw it very well), one of them more dangerous, but not dangerous to the point of stupidity. It doesn't have any sense for a weapon to have thousands of years old and being a revered relic of the long time lost wonderful technology and to explode on a 1/50 basis. There would be no plasma weapons at all xD. They would half explode just in the trainings xD

Honestly Id make Overheat scale with how much use its been. with no chance at low power and at max a chance that scales with firing over time. So the risk is in longterm use in a battle. In tabletop the weapon is assumed to be constantly firing hence the overheat. Large swathes of plasma fire eventually overheat the systems causing a plasma vent. To reflect this Id probably including an overheat scale where the overheat threshold increases by one increment for every round in use and decreases by one increment for every round not in use.

Uhm. I Remember having seen some tweaks for weapons of DH1 in DarkReign forum long ago....

(5 minutes later)

Here it is, yep.

One of the tweaks was putting Recharge OR Overheat in the same plasma weapons. So it did overcharged if you skipped Recharge rules.,

The second one was more or less the same, but eliminating Overheat and adding a rule called "Plasma". Plasma read like this: If you shot a Plasma weapon two following rounds, it gains Overheat that second round and the followings until you let the weapon to rest for an entire round. (Also, they had Tearing and more damage than in DH1, that was just ridiculous).

It doesn't have any sense for a weapon to have thousands of years old and being a revered relic of the long time lost wonderful technology and to explode on a 1/50 basis. There would be no plasma weapons at all xD. They would half explode just in the trainings xD

I think the idea is more that the weapon vents all gases/energy/magic-space-fuel to AVOID blowing up, usually resulting in the operator having to take a quick trip to the burn ward.

The idea of Recharge OR Overheats is a good one, and it works pretty well with lore and how the tabletop worked way back when. Imperial Plasma Weapons had Recharge, whereas Chaos ones had Overheat because they had no real regard for their own safety compared to the Imperials. I assume they changed this in the more recent editions cause recharge is a pain to track in a wargame.

I would like to see a low power shot for TT.

For me the whole Pen 7 was FFG just literally taking table top mechanics for granted and implementing them, rather than my presumption where they were given AP3 for game purposes (as they were sorely lacking any role in the game). I would personally have them remain Pen 4, as I feel the AP 5 of the 3rd edition iteration is at the level it is "meant" to operate. However, that is just a personal opinion.

You all are talking about what "feels right" when discussing game mechanics, which is exactly the wrong way to discuss mechanics.

Do some math before you go changing numbers around.

While you are right that mechanics have to be considered, what "feels right" is very important for genre emulation. If a mechanic is totally balanced, but doesn't feel like how it should behave, it instantly fails at being an RPG for that setting. D20 is a good example. Generally it is a mechanics based game, rather than one that aims at genre emulation. This is particularly the case for 4th edition. You can play the game, and have fun, but I would never attempt to use it to emulate any existing fictional world, as no fictional world (or the real world) works the way d20 works. D20 Star Wars? Terrible idea. The hard maths of the d20 world does not reflect the cinematic and heroic world of Star Wars. The level 14 Luke Skywalker would have been walked all over by the level 19 Darth Vader, yet in the film he beats him. The mechanically wonky (at points at least) d6 system does much better at genre emulation for Star Wars. Quite clearly Luke Skywalker threw some Force points at the problem.

Of course the ideal is that you have both a mechanically balanced system, and a system that "feels right", but the idea that doesn't matter is a false one.

You mistake critical questions for condescension. Have you done the math for the average damage inflicted by these weapons with your proposed changes? If you have not, your opinion is worthless - you'd be talking out your ass. I have to give FFG the benefit of the doubt and assume they have some idea of how the math for their own weapon tables work out. I doubt very much that most people here have done the same work to fully understand the system they put forward. You can't just go changing numbers willy-nilly - you need to know how the system as a whole works.

Well, I think it wouldn't be hard to mistake your general tone in everything I have seen you type as condescension. Saying something is the "wrong way" to discuss things is entirely condescending. And I don't mean you have to say "Oh, I respect your input but..." Even just saying "I have to say I don't agree, as I feel it would mess with the balance of the weapons" or "But how does that then compare to x & y. That breaks the balance with the existing weapons" or anything other than the arrogant tone you use in most posts I have seen you make.

However, based on much experience FFG have almost certainly not looking in details on how their weapons work. Deathwatch suggested this, as do most of the fancy watsists they produce in the splatbooks. Their answers to replies regarding rules questions sometimes call into question how well they know their own rules. In fact, most of what they produce suggests that they largely go with "what feels right", and they don't think everything through.

Never never NEVER have I heard about a power get being someone who wants to pick a weird concept and have it be effective. That is not power gaming. That is being creative or having fun with the options.

Actually, those are perfect examples of the most power gamery players I have met. With a concept being weird 1) they often want to make it work, and so make sure it goddam works, and 2) as the system is not primarily designed around that in mind lots of kinks appear in the system, and suddenly they are overpowered characters. And they know this is exactly what they are doing. Using d20 as an example, someone who wan'ts to power game doesn't go the obvious route. They don't play a fighter... or even a regular mage. Instead they choose the odd prestige classes which everyone thinks look crap, but them combine them in an unforseen way, with a specific magic item, and suddenly they are hideous.

borithan, what you are describing is still someone going out of their way to power game with the weird concept being a means to an end rather than the end itself. If the person broke the game by accident, that would seem to indicate that the rules are at fault rather than the player. This is why myself and others keep wanting to balance things out (while still maintaining flavor!), so that the game does not end up accidentally broken or having terribly uneven players. There are two things that are anathema to running an interesting game: splitting players up and having players be useless/relatively useless at entire encounters/scenes. For the latter, when you have a system resulting in unbalanced characters it becomes nigh impossible to balance encounters and you end up with the relative uselessness. It's fine to have a scene where te thief checks for traps while the other characters have other things to do/checking for traps takes a single roll. It's not fine to have an entire series of traps lasting 20-30 minutes that everyone else stands and watches. This is why you balance out character options and ensure enough basic competence among characters so that people aren't hyper specialized to the point of incompetence at most things. That is a failing of the system at least as much as the players.

Nimsim had a better response, but I wanted to add that holding d20 (specifically OGL d20) as an example of doing anything well is folly. The game had glaring balance problems (some of which you allude to) and resulted in the perfect powergamer's system. Under that system a player with no knowledge of the system can make a completely useless character by selecting options that appear valid (like the Fighter class) while someone with mastery of the system can break it over their knee with very little effort.

You're probably right that FFG hasn't done all of their homework. It wouldn't be the first time a company had no understanding of the mechanics they published. However, they have been working with this system for close to a decade now, so they should have some understanding of how and why it works, and more importantly, when it doesn't work. I make no apology for my tone in questioning people who obviously haven't done any of this work.