N0-1_H3r3 said:

How does this balance out with Accurate weapons? With a +20 to my braced Lascannon, it becomes the sniping tool of choice, no?

+20 Braced, +10 Aim, +10 Single Shot, +10 Short Range (most likely) hits the +60 Cap.

An Accurate Basic weapon might get

+10 Accurate, +10 Aim, +10 Single Shot, +10 Short Range (most likely) "only" reaches +50. 

Did I miss something?

N0-1_H3r3 said:

I completely agree that there should be an archetype of character that can tote heavy weapons around without a need for a loader/spotter and hip fire on the move, but i feel currently it is far too easy. As you say, points buy is the bane of a well balanced RP system and leads to unnecessarily broken mechanics. 

My suggestion of changing Bulging Biceps doesn't completely remove that archetype but it does limit the weapons that those archetypal characters can solo operate. This then reserves the truly powerful weapons for co-op use. I mean keep the Strength requirement at 45 so that only really strong characters can use it but change it to reduce setup-times as i suggested earlier.  

Then add in a higher tier talent that further reduces setup times so that more weapons can be solo operated and have a rule under heavy weapons that states that if their setup time is ever reduced to a Free Action through talents or weapon upgrades, then the weapon can be fired from the hip without bracing.

Introducing your +10 from being properly braced (windowsill, low wall, bipod, tripod, comrades back!) would be a further incentive to use heavy weapons tactically and with some further thought than "hey look guys, i'm rolling so many D10s!" like they currently seem to be.

Darth Smeg said:

Little thing, your math only adds up to +50 for the lascannon and +40 for the basic….  your statment stands though

If you go with this change, I would say you can brace any weapon.  Which is rather true to real life, in your example of your accurate weapon that could easily be a guardsmen standing up which is a much more inaccurate shooting postion then what the lascannon would be in with it braced on a bipod/tripod/wall/corpse.  Now, if the guardsmen with the accurate rifle took a moment to brace his rifle against a fence post or something, he actually would hit his +60 cap

In your example you are also assuming that the heavy was already in a prepared position, in that he was already braced.  if he had to take a half action to brace he would lose the +10 from aiming as he had to brace.  so it would +40/+40

*edit, I too are goods at maths*

Darth Smeg said:

You didn't, though I did - a careless omission in my previous post. The intent is that any Basic or Heavy weapon can be braced (and by extension, all such weapons on vehicles are inherently braced - they are, afterall, affixed to the vehicle) - pistols are excluded, as it doesn't feel quite right, IMO. Part of it is to encourage Bracing weapons where the situation allows. Part of it is to show a flip-side to auto-fire - normally, autofire is inaccurate, but from a static, supported position it can put down a withering hail of fire (compare and contrast: a burst of fire from an autopistol to a burst of fire from an emplaced heavy stubber on a tripod). Part of it is to make the bipod a valid addition to a sniper's arsenal (and really, if you're a decent shot, have time to set up the weapon properly [brace], and line up the shot just right [aim], then you deserve to hit, as you've probably spent a turn or two preparing for that shot).

I think the easiest solution would be to just increase the strength requirement to get bulging biceps. Instead of 45 make it 50 or 55. At 50 it requires at least one strength purchase and the cost of bulging biceps. That is a significant character investment to be able to do that. It means they won't have super high BS right away or weapon skill, and it'll take them a while to get things like fearless or mighty shot.

Don't forget that if they fire at semi auto even with an aim action they aren't likely to have better than a 50-53%(60% if short range i guess) chance of scoring a hit in the first place, let alone getting 2 degrees of success or greater. Most of the time they'll be able to pulp 1 guy per turn. But when you consider that your other players will be playing storm troopers with high BS and a hot shot lasgun, or a commisar with a bolt pistol, or a priest with a flamer, or a weapon specialist with a meltagun or plasma gun it's really not so bad.

Edit: Whoever it was above me that said bracing provides a +20 on the BS skill please provide a page number because I can't see that anywhere. The only thing you get that I can see is that you are no longer penalized -30 for firing an unbraced weapon.

As far as I'm aware as well it doesn't state anywhere that weapons granted by specializations are part of your standard kit so your heavy gunner will need to make logistics tests in order to get more ammo.

Overall I think you guys are blowing the supposed "game breaking" effectiveness of the auto-cannon way out of proportion.

Droma said:

The game starts out. Your Medic player is feeling pretty good about himself; his overloaded M36 is pretty effective. He knows things can get better, but this is good! Then your Commissar struts out onto the field and gets a few kills with a bolt pistol. No problem, he says, it's cool that he gets a radical gun. Then he watches the Operator rip into the bad guys with all kinds of mounted fun, the Weapon Specialist mow down enemies with a bolter, the Heavy Gunner devastating anything short of a Terminator with his autocannon… This kind of gear disparity leaves quite a few specializations out in the cold.

If your medic is overly worrying about how effective their gun is compared to the rest of the party I think they aren't worrying about the correct thing. Every specialization gets something cool that the others don't.

From a pure combat effectiveness standpoint the lamest specializations are probably medic, sergeant, and tech priest but each of those get something really useful that the others don't start with. Not to mention the logistics system is there if someone REALLY wants to get a different weapon. But if you have players that have that much of an issue with feeling left out in combat situations then they're most likely all going to pick the same specialization anyway.

I've been playing with the rules for about 5 weeks now and I've yet to run into the issue of "their gun is cooler than my gun". My medic has saved the lives of the others countless times. The weapon specialist has blown stuff apart with his lasgun, and the tech priest has been having a blast even though he had an arm cut off and had to get it replaced.

As you've pointed out there are tons of strong weapons in the game. Most are 1-2 hit kills on anything short of masters. But you're playing a war game here. This is all about getting the big toys because you're facing things that are very deadly and you're facing a lot of them. Hell if you want it's not hard at all to add horde rules to your game if you really want to encourage full auto fire weapons like the heavy stubber. Likewise tossing a leman russ at the group and they're going to wish they had a melta or a las cannon.

The auto-cannon is a good gun. It may even be like you guys say and be slightly too strong. However I really don't think it is that big a deal in the grand scheme of things. If it is then imho your GM is doing a bad job or your players have an inferiority complex because there isn't a single specialization that doesn't stand out in some way.

Edit: Another thing the gun may be very good against troops but it's not that hot against vehicles. If you include the guns armour pen into the damage against a vehicle it's only on average doing 30 points of damage(24 dmg with 6 pen). That means against a chimera it's doing on average 0 damage against the front armour, 8 against the side, and 14 against the rear. So even with all shots to the rear it's on average 3 hits before crit damage, against the side its 5 shots before crit damage, and you need to get lucky if all the shots are into the front armour.

Then you factor in what are the rest of the enemy doing because I doubt you're only fighting 1 chimera. The enemy is going to fire back with their heavy weapons and lasguns. They're probably going to try and snipe or use suppressing fire on your heavy gunner so he can't shoot and if they can move in and take them in close combat or lob grandes at them while they're pinned from the suppressing fire.

Point is I think all of you are reading too deeply into a stat line without taking into account what type of encounters your players are going to regularly find themselves in.

Droma said:

That's correct. I was making a house-rule suggestion (one that I've brought up in internal discussions during the development of BC and OW, without success), not quoting the rules-as-written.

Droma said:

I think you misinterpreted out discussion - we'd moved on from saying the Autocannon is too good a starting weapon or too good stats wise.

The point is that all heavy weapons are clumped together into a single class, and the Bulging Biceps talent is pretty cheap and easy for a HG to get hold of early on, meaning you have a guy who can run around and chuck out mobile firepower out to many hundreds of meters range with very little out there he can't damage.

By changing slightly how heavy weapons are defined (such as splitting them up into a few different sub-groups depending on their complexity by making Bulging Biceps slightly less universally useful we return to some kind of heirarchy when it comes to heavy weapons. Sure you can dive straight in and get the biggest baddest gun, but because it isn't as mobile as say a heavy stubber it becomes less useful for the group that early on.

In fact my very point was that the weapons stat line shouldn't be all that defines it as a 'best choice' for a class but rather the interplay of game mechanics, player character options and group dynamics.

 So, how does my suggestion sound?

@Kasatka

I think that is a perfectly viable stance to take if you are developing a new rpg or are into heavily modifing existing ones. I still think all of you are overblowing what in essence is not an issue or at most a very minor one though.

You stated it makes weapons mobile that can shoot potentialy hundreds of meters. That part is true. However we're talking about them taking a half move which will generally be 2-5 meters at most and using a gun that has a range of 300 meters. The short range on the thing is 150 meters. So the 2-5 meters of mobility is really a tiny drop in the bucket that won't really matter. If they can see the target they can shoot it.

If I made any rules changes it would probably be to not allow scopes or called shots to be used with heavy weapons so they don't turn into sniping weapons.

At this point though I think I've gotten my point across. If all of you feel like developing house rules have fun with it. I know some people really get into and enjoy that sort of thing.

Cheers Mates

What if Bulging Biceps halved the -30 penalty for failing to brace instead of eliminating it entirely? A -15 penalty seems enough that the talent is still useful without being gamebreaking. Heavy Gunners should still prefer Bracing whenever possible, but they can still contribute without it.

Tech-priests in Rogue Trader can get Machinator Array, increasing Strength and Toughness by 10 each and tripling their weight/mass, and then get Enhanced Bionic Frame for the Auto-stabilised trait. Ogryns start with the Auto-stabilized trait. I can buy them being able to easily heft around Autocannons, Heavy Stubbers and similar weapons by themselves.

A normal human, regardless of how big their biceps are, should be unable to perfectly match that degree of physical power.