Do NPCs, Adversaries, and Hordes use the Righteous Fury rules when they roll "0" on damage?

Hordes never do. For NPCs it depends on whether you find it to be appropriate. There was a Trait in Dark Heresy that mentioned how many Fate NPCs would have but I can't remember if it was carried over to DH. Generally I reserve that power for high-importance solo units. Hive Tyrants but not Tyranid Warriors; named Tau commanders but not rank-and-file battle suit pilots. Etc.

Kshatriya, thank you for replying.

I agree with you on Hordes, but not NPCs. There is nowhere I can find that states it's up to the GM for Righteous Fury. It states Righteous Fury rules are activated when "the attacker" rolls a "0" for damage. I understand that it seems wrong for an enemy of the Emperor to get Righteous Fury, but without it, the only adversaries that have any chance of harming the marines are hordes and boss monsters.

For example, the standard ranged weapon for a Tyranid Warrior is a Devourer. A Devourer does 1d10+9, PEN 0, Tearing. Since most marines start at 8 Toughness and 9 Armour, that means the most damage the TW can do is 2 damage per hit. Once the marines gain a few ranks, they are usually 10 Toughness with 9 or 10 Armour. At this point, Devourers are meaningless. However, add in RF, combined with Tearing, and now Tyranid Warriors are dangerous again.

I cannot give you a cite on this, but in fact it is only PCs and those few NPCs with Touched by the Fates.

Unless like many people you have shifted over to the OW/BC rules, in which case everyone gets RF but it works differently.

Isn't 1d10+9 Pen 0 for the Devourer pre-DW weapons errata? Those upped Tyranid firepoer considerably.

Bogi_Khaosa, thank you for replying.

The Devourer stats I quoted are directly out of the Living Errata v 1-1-1. By your interpretation of Righteous Fury, Elite Tyranid Warriors are no threat at range without a heavy weapon.

It greatly saddens me that the Deathwatch Living Errata has not been updated since May, 2011 to take advantage of all the new rule improvements.

Bogi_Khaosa, thank you for replying.

The Devourer stats I quoted are directly out of the Living Errata v 1-1-1. By your interpretation of Righteous Fury, Elite Tyranid Warriors are no threat at range without a heavy weapon.

If so, that is indeed the case.

I'm pretty sure it's not just my interpretation -- this was the rule for all WH40KRP lines until Black Crusade. It's in there... somewhere in that poorly organized rulebook. Although people have ignored it and given NPCs righteous fury anyway.

EDIT... yep. Wouldn't you know it, it's in the description of the Touched by the Fates Trait of all places.

Bogi_Khaosa, nice catch. Thank you.

And a quick correction of my own post, Devourers also have Storm.

Yep, which gives GMs an out. If a GM wants their NPCs to generate RF, they can simply give that NPC touched by the fates.

Yeah, couldn't think of the name of the trait. I wouldn't give Tyranid Warriors (for example) any actual Fate to spend, but yeah letting them RF isn't a big deal to me. Very fun using the OW RF rules for this too.

As an addition to what people wrote... Gauss weapons do score righteous fury.. they are nasty...

Good to know, thank you.

Just wondering why you use Tyranids as a ranged enemy. The first thing that comes to my mind when they are mentioned are horrible monsters that tear through power armor like butter. And Space Marines are supposed to be the elite of the elite in the Empire, if the standard troops of their enemies could kill the with ease the Empire would have been gone a long time ago. Tyranids are not meant to be that nasty in ranged combat, their strength is in melee. Most opponents in the game will have one or more things they are bad at, and you can use that against them, but so does the space marines.

Darshaagan, thank you for replying.

Two points.

First, my main premise was to ask why the designers of the game completely "nerfed" weapons that in the real Warhammer 40K game are fully capable of killing Space Marines? What is the point of giving Elite Tyranid Warriors weapons that have zero chance of hurting the hero?

Second, my players went through seven sessions of a long genestealer/tyranid invasion campaign. If the Tyranids are 1-trick ponies, e.g. only dangerous in hand-to-hand, the game becomes quite boring since the heroes can take measures to ensure the Tyranids rarely get close enough to use said 1-trick.

Having said all that, by giving the Tyranid warriors Touched By The Fates (0), they now can affect the Space Marines. Still requires some lucky shots, but now the sense of danger is back, so the players take them seriously. Do I shoot the charging genestealer, or the Tyranid Warrior with the Death Spitter that may also be the battlefield commander?

As noted, Gauss weapons always have access to Righteous Fury. Outer Reach notes that this ALSO applies to hordes, but only at the GM's whim.

As I see it, Tabletop is more of an abstraction of 41st Millenia combat than Deathwatch. Many things generally fall in line in DW as they do in TT, but TT is adjusted to be more fair (so an IG player 'only' has to buy so many models compared to an SM player), whereas DW is free to have things be as ridiculous as they should.

That said, Tyranid weapon rules do have a problem in DW, given that they are often Strength-dependent in TT and do not scale like that in DW, which I think is a genuine oversight. A Carnifex's devourer pair is just gonna be a bigger weapon than that of a Termagant, fellas. So I'd kick up some rules for scaling up Tyranid weapons based on the wielder, so that Termagant devourers require a horde of firepower to worry a Marine via the sheer number of tiny flesh eating worms per square inch, whereas a larger Tyranid Warrior has a weapon of the caliber that can concern a Marine on its own.

I'll point out something.

Even though they appeared in the errata, the errata weapons appear to have been designed with Black Crusade mechanics in mind. (They are pretty much identical to those in Black Crusade.) Black Crusade uses a different Toughness mechanic and a different Righteous Fury mechanic. (For one thing, all NPCs have RF in BC.)

To make them function in Deathwatch, I think their damage should increased by at least 3 points each.

I'll point out something.

Even though they appeared in the errata, the errata weapons appear to have been designed with Black Crusade mechanics in mind. (They are pretty much identical to those in Black Crusade.) Black Crusade uses a different Toughness mechanic and a different Righteous Fury mechanic. (For one thing, all NPCs have RF in BC.)

To make them function in Deathwatch, I think their damage should increased by at least 3 points each.

As many of us already know (but for those who don't), the errata weapons were put in place following the many complaints of the heavy bolter utterly devastating everything it hit. Be it human, space marine, or land raider. So they redesigned damage to put out a slightly higher average, a lower maximum damage, and accross the board lower the number of dice rolled to decrease the chances of righteous fury. They also specifically lowered the rate of fire on the heavy bolter and astartes bolter to limit massive number of hits, but also to make it harder to hit at ranged with bolters (this was before Only War/Black Crusade) and try to force players to use the heavy bolter to provide covering fire and suppression, instead of everyone.

Captain Ventris - Actually, that makes a lot of sense. Just like the Space Marine weapons do more damage than the Imperial Guard equivalents.

I'll point out something.

Even though they appeared in the errata, the errata weapons appear to have been designed with Black Crusade mechanics in mind. (They are pretty much identical to those in Black Crusade.) Black Crusade uses a different Toughness mechanic and a different Righteous Fury mechanic. (For one thing, all NPCs have RF in BC.)

To make them function in Deathwatch, I think their damage should increased by at least 3 points each.

As many of us already know (but for those who don't), the errata weapons were put in place following the many complaints of the heavy bolter utterly devastating everything it hit. Be it human, space marine, or land raider. So they redesigned damage to put out a slightly higher average, a lower maximum damage, and accross the board lower the number of dice rolled to decrease the chances of righteous fury. They also specifically lowered the rate of fire on the heavy bolter and astartes bolter to limit massive number of hits, but also to make it harder to hit at ranged with bolters (this was before Only War/Black Crusade) and try to force players to use the heavy bolter to provide covering fire and suppression, instead of everyone.

I don't think this is 100% true. I can't prove this, but I'm pretty sure that they had already been designed for the upcoming BC game and around those mechanics, and then were simply dumped in the errata.

My main reason for thinking this is that the mesh very well with BC's Unnatural Toughness system, but poorly with Deathwatch's. You can see this clearly if you look at how they interact with the range of possible Marine Toughness Bonuses in the two systems: a BC marine in power armour with maximum TB (11 for anybody who doesn't have Mark of Nurgle) can still be hurt easily be a bolter, but the same marine in DW (TB14) can barely be touched by it.

The same applies for Deathwatch's NPCs, especially Tyranids, large numbers of which have TBs in the high teens and 20s. Literally nothing, I think, in Black Crusade has a TB higher than 11 other than Daemon Engines.

(Additionally, in BC/OW, you can Suppressing Fire with a semi-auto weapon, which is another indicator.)

And Overwatch with single shot and semi-auto, which should have always been a thing.

In any case, I have seen a lot of concerns about errata bolters being unable to harm SMs using the DW Unnatural Toughness system. I don't want to change the Unnatural rule from multiplicative to additive at this time. How much do you think I should increase bolter damage to make CSMs a threat with bolters and able to be killed by them?

And Overwatch with single shot and semi-auto, which should have always been a thing.

In any case, I have seen a lot of concerns about errata bolters being unable to harm SMs using the DW Unnatural Toughness system. I don't want to change the Unnatural rule from multiplicative to additive at this time. How much do you think I should increase bolter damage to make CSMs a threat with bolters and able to be killed by them?

The Dark Heresy framework does have some significant scaling issues at the higher levels. A toughness 60 space marine with artificer armor and a storm shield is nigh impossible to hurt with just about anything short of a D weapon. I haven't tested the original weapon stats with OW style combat actions, but I think a penalty to rapid firing may counter the original stats. Again I don't know if that will work. There isn't many options to upgrade damage without bringing back the "bolters kill literally everything."

I am fairly certain the weapons from the errata were developed to solve the problems I've mentioned above congruently with Black Crusade, which would have suffered the same issues as DW had the weapons not been modified.

I have used using the pre-errata weapon stats in conjunction with BC/OW rules, and they work reasonably well in Deathwatch. The nerf to autofire really reduces the effectiveness of the heavy bolter in itself (2 fewer hits on average). I might also bring over the BC/OW Righteous Fury rules, which would also make NPCs much more dangerous, though that would entail getting rid of Volatile and Deathwatch Training.

To use the errata stats in Deathwatch, I think I would, instead of increasing weapon damage, convert Unnatural Toughness over, using Toughness 40 as the baseline. So UTx2 would become UT+4, UTx3 would be UT+8, etc. Something like that. That might deal with the large number of Deathwatch NPCs with Toughness that make them immune to 1d10+9.

BC/OW RF rules are a lot of fun, my players like it a lot more than straight damage because of the status effects. However, I've left Deathwatch Training - no need to confirm a crit. And I've changed Volatile (which has always been wonky with Deathwatch Training in play): it simply adds a flat 1d10 actual damage as well as the 1d5 "critical" OW effect. It's worked well so far.

I mention changing weapon stats because my players would riot if I changed unnaturals, haha. The Devastator is already disappointed about his heavy bolter going from +20 to hit to -10. But when you consistently hit 8 DoS with that thing, the problem is apparent.

Something else you could do if you wanted to change the Unnaturals is do what it looks like FFG did in BC/OW, which is to just translate from TT.

The mechanics in TT and the RPG work differently of course, but if you look at the NPC stat blocks and compare them with TT, the various levels of Toughness Bonus appear to be correlated with the weapon stats.

By which I mean, if a weapon can hurt something in TT, it should be able to do it in the RPG.

So for example everything with a T6 or lower in TT can be hurt by an S3 weapon. Ergo, this is also the case in the RPG, which is why I assume nothing other than Daemon Engines (and Greater Daemons with Daemonic factored in, and the Leviathan from Tome of Blood) has a Toughness Bonus higher than 11 -- correlating with a laspistol doing 1d10+2 in standard mode.

In general, it seems to translate like this:

T2 = TB2 (Gretchen and such)

T3 = TB3-5 (human range)

T4 = TB6 or 8 (Orks, Space Marines -- Orks in BC/OW get True Grit and marines don't, so they are actually roughly equivalent despite Orks having a lower TB)

T5 = TB9-11

T6 = TB12

T7+ = TB13+ (undamagable by an S3/1d10+3 weapon disregarding Righteous Fury)

(Weapon damages and AP values translate similarly, with the caveat that certain qualities, mainly Flame, that increase lethality over time translate to lower immediate damage, and Tearing translates to higher damage.)

Armour values translate similarly (the one exception I can think of offhand is the Bloodthirster):

ArS 6+ = AP2-3

ArS 5+ = AP 4-5

ArS 4+ = AP6-7

ArS3+ = AP8-10

ArS2+ = AP11-14

(Weapon Pen values are correlated with this; if a TT weapon can ignore a 6+ armour save, it has a Pen of 2-3 in the RPG.)

So a Carnifex (T6 ArS3+ in TT, if I member correctly) should have TB12 AP8-10 (probably 10). Which makes it hurtable (sans RF) by both an Astartes bolter and a normal heavy bolter -- but not much.

_{As mentioned Rules As Written I think it is Touched by Fates that allows NPC to use RF. However I have found things a lot quicker, more lethal, and more fun if RF can used by everyone (including hordes) and auto confirms. It makes battles very tense knowing that a lucky hit coudl fell one of the Battle Brothers.}

Autoconfirm for everyone vs everything greatly obviates the value of Deathwatch Training.