KommissarK said:

Primitive armour counted only half its AP (before substracting penetration) when being struck by non-primitive weapon, meaning a man-stopper round went through it as if it was shirt.

I personally preferred the old Primitive rules, even if primitive weapons have always been underpowered. Modern armor made them useless, but they were dangerous against unarmored targets. You need to remember that bows were used in war to kill, not to inconvenience, and a broadhead arrow is no less lethal than a bullet, just a lot harder to aim.

 How about combining old and new rules? 

Primitive quality works only when someone is equipped with non primitive armour. That way if someone is unarmoured or has only leather armour, you still can harm with arrows. Primitive armour would have to be halved against normal weapons as per old DH rule. Chainmail isnt real protection against gunshot. 

So the wording of the rule would be more or less like this. I dont have the book with me right now. 

If the enemy is wearing primitive armour or has natural armour (x) trait - ignore this quality. If the enemy is wearing non-primitive armour or has machine trait, treat any roll higher than listed value as listed value. eg with primitive (7) any roll above 7 would be treated as 7. Weapon with this quality would still inflict Righteos Fury on a roll of 10. 

So whaddya think?

 That could actually work quite well. It'd keep low-tech weapons viable against their intended targets (other low-tech equipped soldiers) while at the same time not rendering them harmless against more technologically advanced foes. 

One problem usually found in earlier 40K RPGs was that if you wanted to put primitives as antagonists you either found ever more contrived ways to give them on-primitive primitive weapons (Lure of the Expanse, I'm looking at you) or you found out that your players were virtually invulnerable to anything their foes might dish out.

I still think that bows should do 1d10+3 damage and X-bows and muskets 1d10+4, just like in Fantasy RPG.

Musclewizard said:

So… medieval plate armour is now almost as good as carapace armour (weight aside). Derp… Bullets should make a total mess of that, but they won't.

"I still think that bows should do 1d10+3 damage and X-bows and muskets 1d10+4, just like in Fantasy RPG." - While it would be nice for total consistency , I think that would just make them too good compared to modern weapons, even with the Primitive quality. The two systems are very close (which makes sense, Dark Heresy being developed from 2nd ed. Feudal plate has 5 AP in Dark Heresy, the same full plate provides in WFRP 2nd. I did have a thought of trying to universalise the systems of WFRP 2nd and Dark Heresy a little while back, but one of the major issues I couldn't resolve was the "Primitive" vs "modern" weapons.

At least in Dark Heresy I saw plenty of use of primitive weapons and armour, but then the game didn't get that far into the campaign, and it seems much more common for PCs and NPCs not to be fully armoured in that game.

Thats why I said primitive armour vs non-primitive weapons should be halved (rounding up), just like it was in DH.

borithan said:

I honestly don't think so. It'd make them lethal, yes, but bows and arrows have always been killing instruments. But better? Not even close. They have relatively low range, no penetration whatsoever, low rate of fire and a clip of 1, which means you can't even move and fire without Quick Reload. And barring explosive or mono arrows (if your GM allows them) they have no unusual ammo. The only thing they have in their favor is that they're not as loud as firearms.

The best solution I've read so far is to ignore the Primitive trait when used against primitive armour. This shouldn't result in primitive armour being halved against non-primitive weapons, though - that would IMO be too much hassle.

@borithan

So… medieval plate armour is now almost as good as carapace armour (weight aside). Derp… Bullets should make a total mess of that, but they won't.

I disagree. Armour plates were still (rarely) in use in the trenches of WWI. While not as effective as they were in the age of chivalry, having a solid steel plate between you and a bullet does make quite a difference. However, considering that for only a little less protection (and no loss at all against shrapnel) you can get flak armour that weighs a third of the plate, I think the evolution is obvious.

Yes, there were armour plates used in WW1, but they were in no way expected to stop rifle hits. They protected against shrapnel, ricochets, and maybe bullets that were essentially spent due to range. They were little use against actual hits from rifle rounds (would it have been theoretically be possible to make a plate thick enough to stop a bullet? Yeah, but they would have been far too heavy to be usable). Plate armour, aside from that made from special materials (which is essentially what Carapace armour is), should provide little protection. Not none, but little (In Dark Heresy it would have provided 2AP, which good enough to me).

Honestly, I doubt any player is going to take this. For 10 points (at character creation), you're better off getting best quality guard flak armour over full plate. If a player wants to go for style (and eats the 30kg weight), then more power to em. And by the time your talking "best craftsmanship full plate" your on the exact same level of availability as common craftsmanship storm trooper carapace. Which are both effectively the same piece of gear.

It might happen during play, where a player wants a "cheap" upgrade from guard flak thats not light carapace, but the weight is still the downside.

 No one wears a medieval plate or marches to war with bow and arrows unless they want to make some kind of fashion statement, but the importance of discussing primitive wargear is that the GM might use primitives as antagonists, such as the Guard being sent to contain an uprising in a Feudal or even Feral world. It's difficult to balance because with the old rules flak armor made a character virtually inmune to both blade and arrow, but with the new rules a armored feudal knight with a shield is almost bulletproof.

JuankiMan said:

Well if the full plate was well polished, I imagine a lasgun would have some issues damaging (cue paranoia reflec armour reference).

Cifer said:

That's ok, but primitive armour values had to be suitably adjusted to reflect their worse protection against non primitive weapons. Eg full plate 3AP, chainmail 2AP, furs/leather 1 AP. That should speed things up, without having to adjust every armour in the book. 

KommissarK said:

If it was polished to an absolute mirror shine and somehow stayed clean enough to remain like that, perhaps. A regular bullet would make an absolute mess out or it, though.

JuankiMan said:

I wouldn't put it past someone to say that a lasgun could damage a perfect mirror surface. After all, in one of the Word Bearers books a pilot manages to shoot a hole through a window with a laspistol. I stopped reading after that.

DJSunhammer said:

From my understanding, there's no reason that shouldn't work. Although the name implies it's a laser, it's definitely not just a "light beam" as the name would imply. To look at a couple different sources: 

OW Rulebook: "Las weapons work by emitting short, sharp pulses of laser energy from high-storage fast-discharge capacitors with a flash of light"

The lasgun is still shooting a burst of energy, and the 'light' aspect is just a byproduct. 

warhammer40k.wikia: " he high amount of energy carried by the photons of the beam causes the immediate surface area of a target to be vaporized in a small explosion"

Imperial Munitorum Manual: "It fires an explosive energy blast with an effect similar to a bullet or small shell."

So based on in-universe explanation, lasguns fire less like a beam and more like a small packet of explosive energy. I realize all of this makes very little realistic sense, but this is the 40k universe and thus operates on its own laws of physics: look at Power Weapons, which canonically "disrupt solid matter," whatever that means.