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Xenuite

Both games have started right now. It's doubtful that you'll get in on any of them.

If you are gung ho on a play by post game of DH I suggest highly checking the following website.

http://www.myth-weavers.com
http://www.dndonlinegames.com
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=51
http://www.rpol.net

These sites all have dedicated sections to playing play by post RPGs. I know that Myth-weavers currently has a game about to be started, one that I also intend on joining. You may keep looking at these games but it is doubtful that you'll get in.

Damn it dark I wanted to go with Diver . It's aight though, I suppose Octavius can stay on the ground.

What? I'm LEAVING with Diver.

If you want to stay behind and be in that sniper hole or whatever, be my guest.

I'm staying behind. As far as the sniper hole goes, as I understand it only one person can shoot from it. The whole team was able to meet up and plan the assualt there however, so a fairly large space is right there as well.

Lazarus may regret his decision later, but right now he has the Emperor's fury going through his blood at the moment.

So, Lazarus, Octavius, and Varnius are staying behind, and everyone else is going back with Diver?

Anyone seen Sylasgaunt around? Preacher Havelock should probably have his actions described before we all get back to the Grimlock base.

Sorry guys, I've been feeling uncreative for days and am just bearly getting ready to post now, after having avoided this entirely for almost a week it feels like.

Next time this happens, IM me repeatedly to get me to move. I work better when motivated.

As far as the recon team's positions go, I figure we got a couple of guys watching from the sniping point (Octavious is there for sure), while we also rotate men from nearby (no more than 5-10 meters away) defensive positions in the tunnels. This work for everyone?

Just making a post to show that I'm still here, and considering that I have got to have 2 fatigue points by now (if I had 3 I would be unconscious!) and I probably still have that -10 from fear, if I had to make an intelligence check my effective score would be something like 1, running at the mouth seems a little justified.

Trying to get caught up now that I've crawled out from under a deluge of coursework.

You didn't miss all that much.

So the Inquisitor's handbook is out in England, and damn if I can't wait for it to hit North America. As people are wont to do, they have been talking on the Internet, and from what I've seen and heard, the MP Lascannon is not the most ridiculously powerful thing out there.

And for Quintos I am suddenly glad that I decided to take Heavy Weapons Training (SP) because they now have stats for the assault cannon (-/-/10 ROF, 3d10+5 I, Pen 5, Unreliable, and Tearing) and the autocannon (S/2/5 ROF, 4d10+5 I, Pen 4). True, the weight on both is probably insane, but damn.

Of course, with our GM we'll have to kill the guys wielding them first, and even then we'll have had to have stripped them off the vehicles to actually use them. Of course, that is what I call sounding like a fun game session.

3d10+5, autofire and tearing? That's beyond disgusting.

I know, its absolutely sick, but someone posted a scan (which makes me want to buy the book more now) of the page in question and it looks legit. I can think of at least four ways that tearing rule would work with the multiple dice:

Roll 4 dice, drop the lowest one. Unpleasant but not as evil as some weapons

Roll 3 dice twice and take the best result of each group. Seems most likely as you're basically rolling for damage twice and taking the best result.

Roll 3 pairs of dice, taking the best result from each pair. Pretty crazy now, but nowhere near as bad as...

Roll six dice, take the three highest. Probably the least likely interpretation as it is absolutely unholy and is likely to kill anything that gets hit.

But yeah, with the autofire rules the odds of getting at least one Righteous Fury every time you pull the trigger begin to rapidly approach unity.

The wording in DH refers to weapons doing a single damage die, which doesn't help us.

I would tend to go with roll 4 dice and drop the lowest. With its autofire and penetration along with 3d10+5 (and a god will need to help you survive if the Unstable roll comes through with a 10) it'll be obscene enough.

Two slightly related points:

1) Can the GM please move the game forward?

2) I'm thinking of house ruling an extra die of damage for plasma and melta weapons in my own games. Vanilla plasma weapons don't have enough punch.

Fortunately, it's not Unstable, it's Unreliable, which is to say that it jams more often, which makes sense from a balance and fluff standpoint. However, looking at the stats again, I doubt it is just the 4 dice, take 3 highest because it costs seven times more than the autocannon, which does more damage, has a longer range (over two times longer), and a much more flexible fire selection. Thus, the only way I can think of to justify that much expense, aside from fluff, is if you end up using one of the options that involves rolling six dice when firing the damn thing.

Also, again, Inquisitor's handbook has several new types of plasma and melta weapons. The plasma blaster does more damage than the melta in the core rules, with better range, although it still has the annoying recharge and overheat rules plus unreliable, but at least it only takes 2 rounds to reload instead of 8. The Mark III Sunfury is like the regular plasma gun, but with four more damage, one more penetration, half the ammo supply but four times less reload time, and it costs the same.

Basically it looks like the stuff that made it into the core rules were all the anemic things because they didn't have the room for the uglier stuff. Incidentally, I am now scared at what will lurk in the book filled with monsters, because presumably these insane weapons will become necessary.

Also, I too would like to get the game moving again. Quintos, once he's all rested up and healed, would like to join a party and check out those suspicions about the starport.

Academia Nut wrote:Fortunately, it's not Unstable, it's Unreliable, which is to say that it jams more often, which makes sense from a balance and fluff standpoint. However, looking at the stats again, I doubt it is just the 4 dice, take 3 highest because it costs seven times more than the autocannon, which does more damage, has a longer range (over two times longer), and a much more flexible fire selection. Thus, the only way I can think of to justify that much expense, aside from fluff, is if you end up using one of the options that involves rolling six dice when firing the damn thing.

In the fluff, assault cannons are lighter and require a lot higher tech to produce (specialized, ultra tough and ultra light materials for the barrels) and ammo is a lot smaller (which means you can carry more of it). Miniturization and portability costs.

Also, again, Inquisitor's handbook has several new types of plasma and melta weapons. The plasma blaster does more damage than the melta in the core rules, with better range, although it still has the annoying recharge and overheat rules plus unreliable, but at least it only takes 2 rounds to reload instead of 8. The Mark III Sunfury is like the regular plasma gun, but with four more damage, one more penetration, half the ammo supply but four times less reload time, and it costs the same.

Good.

Incidentally, I am now scared at what will lurk in the book filled with monsters, because presumably these insane weapons will become necessary.

Go look up Mara strain Psycheunen (Unnatural Toughness x2 + Toughness bonus of 8 + psychic powers and immune to perils of the warp + nasty breeding=TPK) in the main book or do the math on how much damage a bloodletter can suck up (2xToughness and then armour=average bolt weapon hit does around zero damage). Weep now.

Sorry gents, but as you can see, most of my weekends are not spent in front of the computer all that often. I'll get something up in a bit.

Uh oh! It seems our illustrious ganger host is altering the arangement, as he didn't mention giving up loot earlier I believe. Perhaps we should pray he doesn't alter it any further? (Or just shoot or peraps threaten him )

I think my post can be summed up as "I'm not giving up my gun!". Not after all I went through to get it and then the whole lugging it around thing. I mean, I won't endanger the group, but its going to take considerable effort to get me to part with my new heavy stubber.

Oh, and the assault cannon is actually probably the heaviest weapon in the game at 60kg, 5kg heavier than the autocannon, so at a cost of 7000G and only ten turns worth of ammo to the 20 to 4 turns worth of fire (depending on how you fire it) for the autocannon, if you only roll 4 dice for the assault cannon then in comparison the autocannon is superior in every way. Of course, it wouldn't be the first time that there are weapons introduced that aren't worth getting, but generally weapons with higher costs are better in some way to other comparable versions.

I've been hearing that the autocannon requires two people to use and has 1/10th the ammo of the assault cannon. Now I don't know if the person who wrote that is bsing, but if true those are very significant advantages for the assault cannon.

Yeah, if true that makes sense. I've only seen the basic weapon description, not any of the special rules, and yeah, it only has a tenth of the ammo, but since it has a much lower rate of fire (it has single shot, semi-auto, and auto while the autocannon only has auto) the expenditure is less and thus it can go for longer between needing to reload if properly managed. Of course, with both of them you pretty much need a second man because the sheer weight means you will pretty much need a guy to haul the gun and a guy to haul everything else without the gunner suffering a hernia. The average guardsman with strength and toughness bonuses of 3 each will only just barely be able to carry the weight of the assault cannon and his armour, and nothing else, and even then he won't be able to carry it long distances as he will be 1kg under the lift limit.

The Inquisitors Handbook, if nobodies got hold of it (ebay is best, no fucker else seems to have a clue online).

Anyway, the Handbook ? PURE WIN. From a background fanboy perspective, its full of so much cool stuff and I've only leafed through it.

From tempest "plasma shock" bolter rounds to Spacehulks nearly the size of gas giants.

Purge the Unclean looks really fun as well, if only this was out 10 years ago when I had opportunity to play an RPG with people.

Academia Nut wrote:The average guardsman with strength and toughness bonuses of 3 each will only just barely be able to carry the weight of the assault cannon and his armour, and nothing else, and even then he won't be able to carry it long distances as he will be 1kg under the lift limit.

Average men do not carry assault cannons. The only person I know of to use one that wasn't vehicle mounted or wearing at least powered armour (with that nice massive strength bonus) was Bragg of Gaunt's Ghosts, a man of immense size and strength.

Autocannons have lower rates of fire does help with the ammo conservation but:

1) If you're in a situation where you're considering using an assault cannon, its because you need an enormous rate of fire. Enormous rates of fire =more hits. It's a good thing . . . . as long as you don't run out of ammo. This leads to:

2) A somewhat lower rate of fire doesn't compensate for a x10 ammunition capacity gap.

Well, I didn't mean carrying it and firing it from the hip, I meant just transporting the damn thing would strain the abilities of most men. But fair enough point. Thing is, unless they errata'd the rules so that with autofire you get a hit on every degree of success rather than every two, you're going to get maybe one or two more hits with the assault cannon on full auto than the autocannon on semiauto. Against masses of low end enemies the damage is more than enough to mow through them, which is what the assault cannon is design for (theoretically, although on the tabletop if you do the math it's better than a lascannon at taking out A14 due to the rending rule except for the shorter range). Not sure how often though the GM would throw swarms big enough to warrant that sort of firepower though. If you're being given assault cannons and autocannons to play with that means you're probably being sent to take on nastier things.

Autofire is one additional hit for every degree of success. Semi-auto is one for every two. It is printed correctly on all the subsequent tables (including the GM's screen) and was one of the first errata confirmed. And you can get a lot of degrees of success against a big bastard (die T-rex! Die!) when you're using autofire.

Hoo boy am I going to have fun with my heavy stubber then! Of course, I should probably be dead too after that last fight... of course, the muties firing the guns would also have been pasted a hell of a lot faster too. In which case it doesn't matter what rules are used for tearing with multiple dice, the pain inflicted with the assault cannon will be insane. What's really ugly though is that a pimped out guardsman with 5 bonuses in strength and toughness and wearing power armour can just carry an assault cannon without penalties, and if you've taken that path you probably picked up Bulging Biceps anyway so that's a whole lot of killing to do.

Also, pray a psyneunin (sp?) larvae never gets ahold of someone who knows that holocaust power. Corpus Conversion plus the death of the psyker spawning more of the bastards (or an average of five adults 25% of the time, one of which is damn near instant death!) plus overbleed... yeah, that equals kaboom followed by lots of death for any survivors.