Standard is not indicating an Ordinary skill test, is is a type of attack.

It's not an aimed attack, snap shot, full auto, semi-auto, or called shot. It's just a plain old, everyday standard attack. The name is arbitrary. It could have been called a Green-Squid class attack but that would have been confusing. It also happens to have a +10 modifier. That the idea of the default attack has a modifier on it is annoying to you is purely a personal bugaboo. It does not call for system revision or a terminology change.

In particular changing the name to level of a skill check is a terrible idea because it is not a skill check. If you did, it would look like part of the skill system and that will lead to confusion and misapplied rules.

Alekzanter said:

Do you propose Swift Attack / Semi-Auto to be called "Challenging Attack" and Lightning / Full Auto a "Hard Attack"?

I suppose not, because names of combat actions aren't indicative of their mechanical difficulty.

It's not a matter of refinement, it's a matter of you confusing two distinct logical categories.

"WS 32…Yay. I'm a massively talented melee machine,"

I think this is where the confusion comes from.  At 30ish WS/BS, a well aimed attack is indeed the way to go.  (and I would hesitate to call them massively talented)

When you have a WS/BS in the 50+ range you have the skill to do obscene things with Lightning Attack or Full Auto.

(When using these rules in our DW game we had to tone down LA since the Assault marine could kill anything with his WS of 70 and Lightning Claws.  I did the math and my Dev with BS 70 had to roll well with an assault cannon to possibly out perform him.)

And that's kind of the problem with the new rules for multiple attacks. It means it just sucks balls for people of average (or even slightly above average), but is even more busted than it was before with exceptionally talented individuals, consequently not really solving the problem that it seems to have been designed to solve.

In the past Swift and Lightning attacks were just part of the general improvement of a character in melee. Even Adepts got Swift Attack, and anyone of note seemed to get it in DH. Unfortunately DW treated the multiple attack Talents as "special abilities" for certain specialities, to the extent even a secondary melee character such as the Apothecary only got it at rank 6 (or was it even 7?). Of course, it now has kind of turned into a "special power" with the new rules.

Nathiel said:

That's not a problem created by Lightning Attack but by the Lightning Claws since their damage grows two ways per DoS while most other weapons damage only grows one way (by increasing hits).

borithan said:

I did the math once some time after BC came out, and it turns out Swift Attack / Semi-Auto break even with Standard Attack as low as WS/BS 30 - the latter gets a slightly higher chance of scoring a hit at all, while the former breaks even with a chance to inflict an extra hit, and it averages to about the same chance of landing one hit.

IIRC, Lightning/Full Auto beats both at WS/BS 40+ - hardly an obscene value.

borithan said:

If by "in the past" you mean "in Dark Heresy", then you'd be correct. Take a look at RT:

Rogue Trader: Swift Attack at Rank 4, no Lightning Attack

Arch-Militant (the supposed master of all forms of combat): SA at Rank 8, no LA

Astropath: SA at Rank 8, no LA

Explorator (Tech-Priest): SA at Rank 7, surprisingly LA at Rank 8

Missionary: SA at Rank 4, LA at Rank 8

Navigator: SA at Rank 8, no LA

Seneschal: Neither SA nor LA

Void-Master: SA at Rank 7, LA at Rank 8

Kroot (a dedicated melee beast): SA Rank 6, LA Rank 8

Ork (another melee beast): SA Rank 4, LA Rank 7

Now consider:

RT Rank 4 = DH Rank 9 = Ascension/DW Rank 1

RT Rank 6 = DH Rank 11 = Ascension/DW Rank 3

RT Rank 7 = DH Rank 12 = Ascension/DW Rank 4

RT Rank 8 = DH Rank 13 = Ascension/DW Rank 5

Clearly, the only system that considered giving Swift Attack and Lightning Attack to any- and everyone was Dark Heresy, before BC did away with limiting advancement choices.

The discrepancy is actually one of the reasons behind the fact that despite FFG's claims, the systems aren't compatible in a way that lets you take characters from different games with same exp total and create a balanced party out of them.

Ok, I stand corrected. I guess I tend to think mostly in terms of Dark Heresy. I have never been that enthused with RT (though I do own all the books, but I haven't spent the time pouring over them that I have in Dark heresy), and I didn't play it for long. Deathwatch I did notice the change though due to massive discrepancy of having one career get both in rank 2 while almost everyone else had to wait ages for it, and the fact I played it extensively.

And I will admit I didn't do the maths about swift/lightning attack vs standard attack in the new system. I did have a basic look at the new vs the original system as a comparison, where I came to the conclusion that it would have just made the Assault Marines even more busted than they already were, and wasn't really going to save time as had been suggested. The only other reason for introducing it, internal system consistency with Semi/Full Auto, just is not a reason for me.

You're not considering the change in the wider context of the rules. It all starts with the change to full and semi-auto fire. In earlier systems, the huge bonus of full auto combined with the potential of scoring multiple hits made these weapons vastly superior and thus rendered entire classes of weapons obsolete. Combined with the fact that burst shooting required a full action, this created boring, repetitive fights where the best option was to just stand there and keep shooting. Obviously, neither players sticking to a very specific subset of existing weapons nor the boring "mexican standoff" fights were desirable. So in BC, full auto got "nerfed". It's still a superior option, but only for dedicated specialists (like I wrote in my earlier post, full auto starts to break even at about 40 BS, the average level of starting Astartes and peak level of starting human characters - also the level where with the new bonus to single shots, a dedicated sniper borders on never missing). It also made autofire somewhat easier to evade (lower to hit totals mean less hits on average). I suppose this also factored in reducing the number of reaction characters can have outside of special rules.

All these changes were good, but they left shooters in the dust compared to what melee characters could get. Since melee multiattacks were resolved as a series of distinct rolls, each requiring a separate Reaction to try and evade, melee combat was always much more binary than ranged fighting - simply put, either you had enough Reactions to attempt to evade everything a meleeist throws at you or you were almost certain to eat a nasty hit. With previous autofire rules, it somewhat evened out - a good shooter had a better chance to hit, a good meleeist had a better chance to deprive the enemy of his Reactions and had a more consistent damage output. But with the shooters' main advantage negated, and the decrease in the number of available Reactions, melee would become stupidly powerful.

It didn't also help that previous melee rules also caused a homogenization of combat actions not unlike the one caused by old autofire. As you grew more powerful as a dedicated melee combatant, you just gained more attacks, again at the cost of being able to move. The alternate route to taking swift and lightning attack, the All-Out Attack and ancillary Talents, was clearly inferior, as it gave you less attacks at a bigger cost (losing your own chance to evade the payback), with a rather unimpressive upside of slightly boosting your already decent chance to hit. Again, this is obviously not desirable - the authors created talents such as Furious Assault, clearly they wanted someone to use it. Then, there was the matter of everyone dual wielding if they could get away with it - since most enemies don't go past three reactions, having four attacks is definitely better than having three attacks, even if they're made with worse weapons. But the biggest problem with this was, it made Swift Attack and Lightning Attack the two most important advancements for any character who wanted to do melee. Anyone who bought them was clearly superior to the guy who didn't, even if the latter had higher BS total.

In light of all these problems, someone chose the easy solution and forced parity between melee and ranged multiattack rules. I posit that it was a good decision, as it neatly addresses most of the problems with melee fighting. Dual wielding is still somewhat busted, sadly, but at this point I consider it a discrete problem.

Morangias said:

Could you describe that in some more detail? You obviously put quite some thought into the rest of your post so I'd really like to hear your opinion on that last part as well.

 I always did Ranged & Melee the same, you roll dodge/parry and every degree of success you stop one hit. However you only have one reaction per round, so you'll dodge the first guy's attacks but if targeted again you can't dodge or parry. 

 If you're trained to use your weapon, firing a shot into a place you want it to go isn't "challenging". Sure there may be things that make it challenging, but those are other modifiers that will adjust the roll accordingly. If you're just trying to hit something while standing still and taking a standard shot (which implies you are taking the same time to make one shot as opposed to many, so taking your time) then the chances are going to be in your favor.