Hi,

I have a couple of rules questions.I'm notplaying BC, but I am going to use the BC rules for my Deathwatch game. With the possible exception of a couple of things that seem… strange.

First, in the description of Swift Attack, it says that if you have a Talent that lets you attack with two weapons, only one of them can be a Lightning Attack. However, the ruleson wielding two weapons in the combat section seem to say otherwise.

Second, multiple attacks against hordes. The horde rules say that you score 1 hit per 2 degrees of success. In the other 40KRP lines, this is fine since SA and LA work differently. In BC, does this mean that you can't make multiple melee attacks on a Horde, or that the hits form degrees of success stack with the extra hits from the attack (so that 3 degrees of success with LA gives you 4 hits)?

I am befuddled and bemused.

Where does it state you can only do one in the swift or lightning attack descriptions? Not seeing it in BC at least.

With two weapons, you can either fire one, or the other, in single-weapon style, normally. OR, you can use two-weapon-fighting, where each attack takes a -20 to both attacks, and an additional -20 to the secondary weapon [whichever you use second, really].

If you're ambidextrous, the additional -20 penalty dissapears, and the -20 to both is lowered to -10. You're still limited to a single attack action using one or both, but having the talents is equivalent to installing semi or full-auto fire on your melee weapons, rather than "making multiple attacks". Choosing to use "single", "semi" or "full" with each weapon becomes little more than a setting for each weapon.

For Hordes, Instead of going full-tilt into a single target, you're already doing so with multiple opponents. I'd like some clarification as well, but best guess is that you do a standard attack, and the target being a horde means that, for free, you get bonus hits. Note they're not limited by WS either, and Power Weapons get +1 [you'd think a massive electrified steel cable might as well, but oh well]. This is particularly  nice compared to the standard swift/lightning, as the single-attack bonus and that horde's magnitude can easily add some DoS.

Kiton said:

Description of Swift Attack, pg.132. Although for some reason it mentions Lightning Attack rather than Swift.

EDIT: So you think the interpretation is that you cannot swift or lightning attack a horde? If so I'm not going to import this into Deathwatch, as it gimps assault marines.

Actually that entire section [entire description] was errata'd out and replaced with "you can do a swift attack as described…"

Not sure it hurts assault too terribly. Unlike ranged weapons you're not limited by RoF, and you're usually dual-wielding and the horde attack is equivalent to Swift Attack with +10WS as far as I can tell. You use a standard attack and STILL get extra hits as if using swift, but without the WSb limit on max hits. And if dual-wielding power-weapons, your second standard attack is ALSO getting these bonuses.

at 50WS against a +30-to-hit magnitude, you'd do at least two as soon as  you roll 80 or better, with each of your two weapons. Better quality melee weapons could increase this yet further.

If you rolled a pair of 10s, that would give 7 DoS, that's 3 extra hits, per weapon, plus the initial two[thanks to power-weapon]. Ten hits, which are very unlikely to fail to tear out that much magnitude…

That's more than a heavy bolter could manage, as you can't dual-wield those.

Doesn't seem too bad to me

Does this imply that you cannot use All-Out Attack/Furious Assault either?

For two-weapon fighting+multiple hit attacks, repeated developer questions and the more comprehensive two-weapon fighting section in the combat section both make it clear you can do both. In short, you take the penalties for both multiple hit attacks (+0 for swift, -10 for lighting) and the ones for two-weapon fighting. In return, you can as a half-action make two separate swift/lightning attacks, resolved separately. More, if you have multiple limbs. Some people disagree on how this works out, and there's an appropriate thread on the subject, but that's the rules as written and apparently intended.

For hordes and multiple hits/attacks, I seem to recall developer comment saying that yes, the two do indeed. stack. So every DoS generates on hit on a horde for it being a horde, and another if you're lightning attack, essentially counting twice.

Is there a point in making a Standard Attack against a Horde?

You can't Dodge or Parry anyway,so it seems that your options are always going to be All-Out Attack or some form of multiple attack. (?)

All-out or the Khorne-Weapon explosive charge seem like your best bets. Aiming could help too: I'd certainly see no reason to use Swift instead of Standard against a horde, however, but it doesn't really look to me like you're allowed to use a Lightning attack against it…

Kiton said:

Wait. Why? Shouldn't it follow the logic laid out by reverend mort?

My reasoning here is the explanation under the "melee" header for attacking hordes. To me, that reads both as an improved version of Swift Attack being given out for free, AND "the only" way meleeing a horde functions.

I'd like to see the developper explanation myself, as seems to me that Lightning Attack + Horde Bonus x number of attacks you actually can do [two weapon wielding, extra arms, etc] would mean one guy in melee dual-wielding could easily double what a heavy weapon on full-auto could hope to achieve, and with less required DoS. For example, using the Storm-capable Echon-Pattern Assault Stubber, With DoS 6, you get 12 hits, 13 if using fyceline ammunition for Type-X.

With Lighting Attack dual-wielding power-weapons, you can equal that at WS 40+ by 4 DoS: 4 lightning attack hits + 2 horde freebies +1 power weapon freebie x2: 14 hits total already, rarely of damage as low as the stubber thanks to Strength Bonus. And it could easily go much higher from there.

There is a point in standard attacking a horde - if you have 2 weapons, and if there is a possibility you can use both. You can't use 2 weapons with an all-out attack. 2 attacks means 2 rolls, so twice the DoS. Anyway, i have a nasty rule-lawyer in my BC team, so i sent a rules question. Ill post any answer i can get :P

Kiton - that's of course nothing compared to a gretchin lesser minion throwing a Photon Flash granade at a horde. He can't miss - max scatter is 5m, Granade has Blast (10) so 10 meters, and Blast(10) equals 10 hits on a horde.

Of course if you're shotting a large horde you could just use a 2 weapon wielding renegade with recoil gloves and 2 autoguns firing on full auto. (s/3/10) Heavy guns are usable agains tanks not hordes :P

If you're going to go that far: a dude with two-weapon and power weapons:

WS 60 Lightning Attack, 6 DoS: 1 hit + 1 Power hit + 6 hits + 3 hits = 11 x2. Toss in Extra Arms and he's at 33 already.

Your minion can also be melee this way [with Unnatural WS to compensate for the lack of the actual score when it actually hits].

Either way it'll be far more effective than trying to get 9 DoS on two Autoguns. The main worry with the guns is that 1d10+3 Pen 0 might actually fail to get through the horde's averaged AP+Tb, whereas odds are any good melee weapon is going to guarantee a higher minimum. Have I mentioned never to Micro a Catalytic Mass-Driver if you like actually dealing damage with a weapon?

Kinda sad that frag missiles are less effective than flash grenades, though [although won't it do nothing as the horde gets to have its AP and Tb and the flash actually deals no wounds?]

Flash grenades could rather reduce horde for the sake of ir's hit chances and damage dealt by it (because part of a horde isn't atacking this round) for some time rather than permanently.

OK, I've been doing the math, and for the life of me I cannot understand why they made these changes to Multiple Attack and Two-Weapon Fighting. They don't work. They're awful.

I do not understand why they felt the need to make these changes; the previous system works fine. The problem with WH40KRP combat was with ranged combat -- with single shot vs. multiple shots. The only thing they had to do was to add +10 to melee attacks in order to make the to-hit chance correspond to that of ranged attacks (otherwise you would be better of shooting in melee than using a melee weapon).

I know I'm coming off as abrasive, but I'm really frustrated. I really like the changes to ranged combat, and want to use the whole combat system, and I hate just taking part of a system for fear of messing up balance inadvertently somewhere along the way..

Maybe I'm missing something.

Well, if you just treat melee attempts against hordes as "standard attack only", but as per the attacking horde in melee rule you get an extra hit per two DoS, you get pretty decent numbers. I use 6 here because with all the bonuses vs a horde its a slightly above average, but not spectacular result:

DoS 6 gets the power-weapon melee character 1 base hit, +3 bonus hits and finally one bonus hit from using a power weapon [similar to using explosive ranged weapons]. The odds of the Horde shrugging off any of those blows are almost non-existent, as power weapons with even a modicum of strength behind them hit like trucks. He could use a second weapon, let's say that drops the DoS to 5, but happens twice. 8 kills? decent enough.

Using a Heavy Stubber, since its Full Auto, that same roll would probably be 5 DoS… Sure there's a -20 vs standard attacks, but you could have a motion predictor or targeter quite easy anyways. The standard BC model would be getting 6 hits, and against most non-daemonic things you find in hordes, its probably 6 kills, though less guaranteed than tearing into things with power-weapons.

You're not gonna dual-wield a heavy weapon though unless you've got enough mutation in there that the other guy would probably be quadra-wielding his power weapons [he'd be up to 12 hits then].

But overall, that still has melee keeping up somewhat decently with unloading a heavy assault weapon at the oncoming group, doesn't it? Pretty balanced for both sides.

bogi_khaosa said:

In what way do they not work? I'm not following you when you talk about giving melee +10 so ranged weapons aren't a better choice in melee.  I have been playing DW with BC Rules for a while now. A couple of things I noticed:

1. Like with DW, (and any of these games) find and use the Errata.

2. What the big changes do is make it so a relatively unskilled person (WS/BS 30-40) will make one good attack. For multiple attack actions in both ranged and melee you have to have either a good base skill or a lot of other bonuses to use them effectively. Your 'Average' SM will have 40+ WS or BS. at this point the math comes out nearly even slightly in favor of the single attacks. at 50+ Multiple attacks get better. By 70+ (which isn't that hard really) It becomes a slaughterfest. 

3. The stacking DoS hits for SA/LA and generic Horde fighting only slightly increases the damage the Assault marine does to hordes.  Now you do it in two rolls instead of four. 

We did make a house rule limiting the hits on SA/LA to 3 and 4 respectively. This put the AM to only mostly better at killing things instead of the no contest situation it was before.  Even before we adopted the BC rules he was a monster though.