Adeptus Astartes RP comments.

[Deepcrush]

1d10 pen 6 (plasma) vs semi auto 2d10 pen 4 (bolt) ? Not really a tough choice.

[Tyyr]

First pass at a new weapon table. Thoughts?

Weapon Class Range RoF Damage Pen Clip Reload Special

Bolt
Bolt Pistol Pistol 50m S/2/- 2D10+5X 5 10 Full
Bolter Basic 150m S/3/5 2D10+5X 5 24 Full
Heavy Bolter Heavy 200m ~/3/10 2D10+10X 6 400 3 Full
Bolt Sniper Rifle Basic 500m S/-/- 2D10+5X 5 10 Full Gibby

Plasma
Plasma Pistol Pistol 50m S/-/- 3D10+5E 6 10 2 Full Recharge
Plasma Gun Basic 150m S/3/- 3D10+10E 8 20 2 Full Recharge
Plasma Cannon Heavy 250m S/-/- 5D10+10E 10 30 3 Full Recharge

Melta
Melta Pistol Pistol 30m S/-/- 3D10+10E 10 3 2 Full
Melta Gun Basic 50m S/-/- 4D10+10E 12 5 2 Full
Multi-Melta Heavy 80m S/-/- 5D10+10E 16 15 4 Full

Melee
Chain Sword Melee 1d10+5R 5 Balanced, Tearing
Chain Axe Melee 1d10+8R 6 Tearing
Power Sword Melee 2d10+5E 6
Power Longsword Melee 2d10+10E 7
Power Fist Melee 2d10+10E 8 2xSB
Power Axe Melee 2d10+10E 6

[Deepcrush]

Power swords aren't any stronger for damage, just for punching through armor. So, 1d10+5 Pen 10 would be better.

EDIT

I would leave the bolt weapons alone. They seemed fine to me.

[Mikey]

I think that's overkill - there's no way regular power weapons or 'fists should outclass lightning claws like that. And the rest... some of those things could take out an ork gargant on their own.

[Tyyr]

That's only a partial increase over the powerfist a regular human can wield.

Also, don't compare these to what's in the AA rules. These are tweaked to more match what Astartes weapons do in the fiction. I'd have to tweak the Lightning Claws for these new weapons.

[Tyyr]

Weapon Balancing Rationale

First off, we have to remember that Astartes weapons (SM) are already stated to be much larger and in general better than the equivalents in the DH book. My goal in all this is to balance the weapons to what is seen in the fiction for SM weapons.

So first off our test subjects. Joe, standard human, 10 wounds, 2 toughness, 0 armor. Bob, standard space marine, 18 wounds, 10 toughness, 12 armor (chest). DH boltgun, 1d10+5X 4 Pen. Death is considered to be -8 wounds. There is sort of a gray area where some of the -7 and -8 wounds damage with a chance to kill, some kill outright, etc. In general if they aren't killed outright at -8 wounds they at least are damaged enough that unless they get medical treatment they'll die.

Now first off we need to talk about weapon damage. The DH boltgun averages 10-11 damage (10.5 if you want to get technical about it) with a min of 6 and a max of 15. It has 4 penetration. With average damage (11) a normal unarmored human will still have 1 wound left. Mind you he just took this round full in the chest with no armor and he survives. With max damage the target is reduced to -3 wounds. Max damage from a bolter on an unarmored human will usually only leave them stunned and fatigued. That's... really unimpressive for what should be one of the most powerful guns you can get before getting into the heavy artillery. Guess what, it wouldn't even phase a space marine. There's literally no point in even bothering to find out what happens when someone fires a DH boltgun at a space marine. It's not going to hurt him, even a head shot.

Now we go to the rules set we're using (mostly). Their SM boltgun is 2d10X with 4 Pen. The average damage is 11, minimum 2 (wtf?) with a max of 20 now. Penetration is still 4. What happens vs. and unarmored human? Well amazingly enough on an average shot exactly the same thing. Joe the human is at 1 wound and general unaffected. An Astartes bolt right to the chest or head and he just shrugs and walks off under the DH rules. A standard human. Unarmored. Now what happens when we max it out to 20 damage? He dies, barely. A perfect max damage SM boltgun shot, a 1 in a 100 damage roll mind you, will just barely kill standard unarmored human. 99% of the time a regular human can take an Astartes bolt to the chest and survive, mostly. On the higher damage rolls, 17, 18, 19, he'll be pretty fucked up but not dead. Space marine? Average shot is the same, it makes it through the SM's armor but doesn't do any damage. Max damage? It drops the SM by 2 wounds. That's at 20 damage. At 18 and below it does no damage at all to the SM (with a chest shot, 16 and less to the head and its no damage). I'd have to run the odds to get an exact number but by the rules you're looking at about an 85% chance that a bolter hit to a SM isn't going to even cause so much as a single wound.

Now, in the fiction what happens? Well first off a hit to a human with a SM bolter is pretty much instant death. Hell a hit with a regular bolter is pretty much instant death. In Brothers of the Snake traitor marines died to one to two bursts of a SM bolter. So call it 3 to 5 bolter hits were lethal. Using my example marine that means you were doing about 23 damage to the marine in 3 to 5 hits, so you were doing 5 to 8 damage per hit. That's where I get my base line for damage. One hit is instant death to an unarmored human. 3 to 5 solid hits should kill a SM.

So what did I get for a SM bolter? 2d10+5X with 5 Pen. So the average damage is 16 with 5 Pen. Minimum is 7 with a max of 25. Our regular human is reduced to -4 wounds on an average hit. Wounded, but alive. You'd need an above average shot of 20 damage to get the instant kill on a regular human. Space Marine? Well the average hit does... nothing to the chest. A hit to the head will do a single wound of damage. So at least our average hit MIGHT hurt a space marine. At full damage you'll do 8 wounds to the chest, 9 to a limb, or 10 to the head. It'd take about 3 of those to doom our average marine. An average roll or less does little to nothing, a slight above average can start to wound a SM. Now personally I'm not wild about not being able to outright vape a regular human but on the upper end it can do it and it can wound a space marine. On the whole I'm happy with that damage. Not quite as deadly as the books but almost.

With the bolter's damage set I started to scale off it. The boltpistol does the same damage but at a reduced range. I'm pondering reducing the Pen a bit to 4. The heavy bolter gets a bit more damage along with more range and a slight increase in Pen. The sniper rifle is a single shot boltgun, I gave it a special quality that will allow for some one shot kills against moderately tough targets.

Plasma weapons, in the fiction they are monsters. Good pen and a LOT of damage. I might actually tone the Pen down. Make it Just a point or two over the bolters but with the recharge requirement allowing it to only fire every other turn it's probably fine.

Meltas, less range, more damage and pen. No recharge but between the small clips and short range I think they're fine.

Melee, here's where it gets sort of iffy. In the chain department I upped the damage slightly along with more pen. The marines are larger so are the weapons. I think once you take into account the marine's increased strength they'll behave how I'm wanting them too. Power weapons, this is sort of... odd. I've seen two schools of thought on them, the one Deep seems to be advocating that it does no more damage than a regular sword just with great pen, but at the same time I've read many accounts that would indicate the power field does more than let them slice right through armor, its also doing a good deal of damage itself. I think the best example of this is the power fist. Obviously the power field does more damage than normal or else a powerfist would just do damage like a punch. It doesn't, even in the Inquisitor's rule book it's doing 2d10E with double the user's strength bonus. That meshes with what I've read in places like Brother's of the Snake that mention some kind of disruption effect that literally blew its targets apart. Also I wanted them to be a significant improvement over chain weapons and make them deadly even to a space marine.

So that's the rationale behind how I arrived at these stats. I'm open to discussion on them.

[Aaron]

I'm fine with the stats you came up with, once you factor in that we're going against Orks (and I suspect 'Nids later) who are able to fight a SM hand to hand these are pretty decent.

[Mikey]

I guess this is what happens when your GM is a professional engineer. No arguing with your figures or your rationale. I guess I have to wonder where your idea for kit came from, though.

[Aaron]

Storm of Iron is pretty clear that Power Fists have some sort of disruption effect that allows them to almost ignore armour, with Forrix (an Iron Warrior) punching through and destroying a Warlord Titans knee joint. Dark Acolyte has a similar occurrence IIRC with a Word Bearer punching through the side of a tank.

[Tyyr]

And one of the ultramarines books has a regular PDF officer using a powerfist to tear open a Leman Russ. There's obviously something more than just going through armor going on.

I'm fine with the stats you came up with, once you factor in that we're going against Orks (and I suspect 'Nids later) who are able to fight a SM hand to hand these are pretty decent.

Hmm, I may post my ork stats up here later if anyone is interested. Not like that's a surprise and I'll want people to have that info anyways (easier if people can figure out their own firing effect on the target). I'm shooting to have the average Boy be tougher and stronger than a human but not by a huge degree. Nobs and up tend to get really nasty.

The problem here is I'm getting a lot of conflicting info. In some an average Boy is just about equal to a human in most respects with the higher ranking ones getting to be the ones who are truly huge. In others the average Boy can fight a Space Marine one on one. Not 100% sure what I want to go with there.

I guess this is what happens when your GM is a professional engineer. No arguing with your figures or your rationale. I guess I have to wonder where your idea for kit came from, though.

Well I didn't want to just wing it. If I just winged it with the weapons I would have to deal with people bitch about them later, "X should have done more than that, Y should have done less, etc." Doing this up front ensures things make sense, people agree to them, and we can put it all behind us before we ever get going. Idea for kit? Well I don't think it's really that out there. The only thing that might be odd is that I allowed two basic or one basic and one heavy weapon. Admittedly you can take one basic and a pistol if you want. I went with that to hopefully promote flexibility. A DW kill team is a small force on their own. You need to have options. Also there is some history, I think, of some marines carrying more than one weapon. Its escaping me at the moment but I want to say I've read before of a Marine carrying a flamer and a bolter (not a combi weapon, seperate) with him. Blame the shield thing on some Ultramarines mini's I saw recently and reading Brotherhood of the Snake.

[Aaron]

The shield bit has me intrigued, though it doesn't really fit with the Wolves.

[Tyyr]

They're nothing huge. The small ones have a low AP and are more for show than real sound tactical use. Gives your off hand something to do in melee.

[Deepcrush]

Seems like you've got your run on things here. If you've got a solid plan for it all, like I believe you do. I'll follow whatever rules you set.

And one of the ultramarines books has a regular PDF officer using a powerfist to tear open a Leman Russ. There's obviously something more than just going through armor going on.

A powerfist/chainfist doesn't just punch, it also tears and crushes and drills. The power field puts the weapon partially into the warp. Allowing it to pass through matter much easier.

Hmm, I may post my ork stats up here later if anyone is interested. Not like that's a surprise and I'll want people to have that info anyways (easier if people can figure out their own firing effect on the target). I'm shooting to have the average Boy be tougher and stronger than a human but not by a huge degree. Nobs and up tend to get really nasty.

The problem here is I'm getting a lot of conflicting info. In some an average Boy is just about equal to a human in most respects with the higher ranking ones getting to be the ones who are truly huge. In others the average Boy can fight a Space Marine one on one. Not 100% sure what I want to go with there.

I went over this a bit with LH. The truth is that there isn't any average ork. They change drasiticly from world to world. Some being so small that even a Tau is larger. To some that are the size of a SM. The table top rules evened out a bit with the different choices.

Gretchen - BS 2, WS 2, S 2, T 2, these are the smallest known. Pretty much the size of child in grade school.
Boyz - BS 2, WS 4, S 3, T 4, these are the STANDARD that you find in table top. They are about the same height as a normal human but a little bulkier and more able to take injury.
Nobs - BS 2, WS 4, S 4, T 4, these are the ones you see being equal to SM in most fluff. They aren't bosses, but on some worlds they are the common ground because of how battle active the population is.
Boss' - BS & WS change depending on role. S 4, T 4 is most common but can go up for some. These are the Mad Docs and Teef Bankerz and what nots. Random orks who have found a place but aren't tough enough to be the Big Guy.
Warboss - BS 2/3/4, WS 5/6, S 5/6, T 5, these are the ones that make you go OH SHIT SON! Without doubt these would have the Unnatural Str/Tough traits.

[Tyyr]

That's sort of where I'm going with them. Though I'm going to make use of a few more specialized Boyz types.

[Deepcrush]

If you read the Ork fluff, there are as many Ork professions as there are Human. We just don't really hear about it because when battle comes, every ork is a fighter.