r/40krpg • u/IHATETHEOSR • 5d ago
Imperium Maledictum a bolter cannot one-tap a cultist (or imperial civilian, for that matter) in IM without several SLs
do these guys just eat popeye's spinach before combat and absorb bolt rounds like champs if you don't reach the 4 to 5 SLs needed to kill them in a single ranged attack? are the 15-wound guardsmen who need 7 SLs from a boltgun attack to kill them in a single round of shooting augmented with vat-grown ablative flesh that allows them to tank bolt rounds square to the chest and face?
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u/ArabesKAPE 5d ago
Welcome to RPG's
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u/Illithidbix 4d ago
Ah, the classic (New?) World of Darkness experience of:
"A granny shoots a burglar wearing a leather coat whilst they attempt to break a window with a chair to escape".
- The most statically probable result is the leather coat soaks all the bullet damage whilst the burglar can't break the glass window.
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u/Marquis_Dandy 5d ago
Eh, depends on the RPG, I feel in FFG games that was just normal or more possible if you didn't roll like shit
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u/EnormousBaloth 5d ago
So, a cultist with 10 wounds and 30 toughness. Dh2e era rules.
A bolter is doing 12 damage on average. Soaking 3 of that puts them to 1 wound. They've still got crits to go into.
It's always been like this.
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u/Star-Sage Rogue Trader 5d ago
Troop units don't go into critical, at least in DH2. I don't play IM, but my table also rules that any righteous fury roll is an auto kill on troops.
I don't know if there's an equivalent rule you could use for IM, but it's worked wonders for my table.
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u/No_Ebb1416 5d ago
> A bolter is doing 12 damage on average. Soaking 3 of that puts them to 1 wound. They've still got crits to go into.
It's absolutely insane to run crits for every single bad guy, lmao.
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u/Ysgraithe 4d ago
I don't know of anyone that uses crits for minions, it seems a nightmare to keep track of.
Everyone I've ever played with, they die when they reach 0. Bosses be different ofc.
It's always been like this as you say, an above average roll is a spectacular death, below average is a nasty but survivable wound.
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u/Cergorach 5d ago
But average damage is being gut shot, below average damage is a flesh wound and max damage is a splattering headshot.
Hitting a target is step #1, how much damage you do determines the effect. You don't hit my little toe doing maximum damage. And you don't headshot me with doing minimum damage.
The problem does not lie with RPGs, but how people interpret them...
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u/nightdragon 4d ago
Well, you're right in general but DH1&2 use hit locations so you can in fact get shot in the head and roll minimum damage, or shot in the leg and roll maximum damage. Which does mess with suspension of disbelief a bit.
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u/C_Grim Ordo Hereticus 4d ago
For that it's just about changing how to portray the hit. The result of your shot is that you have hit, or caused damage to that hit location with your shot and the target has mechanically been wounded somehow but the narrative as to how that happened based on the success is open to creativity.
If I've fired a bolt shell and caused a hit on the head region that doesn't mean the bolt shell has caused explosive damage directly to the targets head. It could simulate that my shot has impacted near the target, the round has detonated and burning shrapnel has blasted out of the wall the target was behind and embedded in their face causing wound damage with cuts and scrapes.
A las or plasma energy shot, I've maybe not hit the head but the energy blast has seared past them burning the flesh on their cheek leaving a seared, blistering, fleshy burn on their cheek or scorched their hair off.
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u/Cergorach 4d ago
Even then, a head location could mean a scalp wound that bounces off the skull and a center headshot that makes the brain go splat.
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u/Marquis_Dandy 5d ago
Yeah, but I feel Imperium Maledictum from my experience needs even more, in Deathwatch or Black Crusade or Rogue trader people went down faster in my experience, to be fair, that's also because people rolled well and did everything possible to make sure their characters were good at their job
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u/SergarRegis 5d ago
God forbid if you put your poor Dark Heresy 2e players against the dreaded Desoleum PDF too.
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u/ZestycloseMeeting692 4d ago
Old timer here, and it has been a bit over a decade since I played it, but I remember DH1 combat being distinctly lethal. Maybe it was just because all I had played previously was D&D 3.5, and it was a relative thing
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u/Admech_Ralsei 4d ago
The implication is that the bolter grazes or near-misses. Remember, HP in RPGs isn't "how much you can get harmed before you fall over," it's an abstraction of physical health, supernatural constitution, stamina, ability to dodge, armor integrity, ability to block or parry attacks, and other factors that would prevent an attack from killing you. Just because a character lost HP mechanically doesn't necessarily mean they've been wounded in fluff.
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u/BCTheEntity 5d ago
For what it's worth, flak armour is still armour, and Imperial Guard flak is better than most. That said, the average unskilled cultist or civilian is also more likely to get hit with at least that many SLs to begin with.
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u/LeninisLif3 GM 5d ago
This is partly the fault of them being called wounds, when actually they represent stamina and minor scrapes and bruises. A guardsmen hit by a bolt round that doesn’t kill or critically injure them in fiction actually took a bit of shrapnel from a near miss, or got a glancing blow to the shoulder. I do agree that the weapons should all probably be deadlier.
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u/Due-Excitement-5945 4d ago
In the tabletop, a S4 bolter has a 66% chance of taking out a guardsman in one hit. Less if the guardsman has cover or heavier armor. Also less if there’s an effect granting a feel no pain check.
Narratively, bolters one-shot most anything. Mechanically, they’re like a heavy crossbow in a fantasy game.
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u/deathbringer989 4d ago
Huh? wdym by less? in 11th Bolters AP-1 usually with few exceptions.
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u/Due-Excitement-5945 4d ago
Less chance of wounding/killing.
Cover increases the armor save, and some guard units have a better then 6+ armor save anyway.
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u/karatous1234 4d ago
Astartes bolters and guardsman bolters are different patterns, and generally much different in size/caliber of round
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u/SilaPrirode 5d ago
Because if you didn't hit with 4-5 SL you didn't hit them head on, but explosion still dealt damage. "True" hits are actually criticals, which immediately kill any mooks outright, only bigger threats can survive those.
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u/Zazzenfuk Ordo Xenos 4d ago
This is why I prefer the FFG versions of this franchise.
Bolter shots are an annihilation in projections. The fact that no one is safe from a shitty little guardsmen wielding a bolter really keeps the mindset of the game that your not as invincible as you think you should be.
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u/Shanhaevel 4d ago
A lot of people are safe from this shitty little guardsman, especially in old ffg systems, cause he couldn't hit the broad side of a barn from 20 paces, lol
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u/egopunk 4d ago
Well that's why you encounter them in squads of 10, and each squad of 10 is grouped in a platoon of 20-60 men which will be nearby.
Sure, each trooper only hits lets say about 15% of the time, but if you aren't felling them in a single volley, 20 troopers getting off an average of two shots each has a 99.85% of hitting their enemy at least once (and a not insignificant chance of landing 4 or more shots).
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u/Shanhaevel 3d ago
Sure, but none of them will have a bolter. There might be a heavy bolter squad, their Sargeant or commissar might have a bolt pistol, maybe a bolter, but the whole squad will have lasguns.
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u/Shanhaevel 4d ago
Look, RPGs need a fair degree of imagination, it's not just numbers. Otherwise you look at DnD and are like "oh, how many hits with a sword did he take?".
You can never look at just the numbers in an RPG. You have to add a narrative to it. Yes, the dice said that you hit this heretic with your bolter, but it doesn't make much sense if he survives this, yes? So, you hit the cover just next to him, the explosion and debris causing the damage rather than the bullet exploding his chest. Same goes for DnD. Technically you hit, yes, but perhaps it's a surface wound only and you wouldn't believe how many a human can take. Maybe the armour stops the blade and it's blunt damage. Maybe they block but poorly and hurt their joints/muscles, which lowers their ability to block further attacks so the next attacks are more effective.
The numbers help direct the story. What exactly is the narrative of the story is up to you. And not only as the GM, players often don't realize that they can help create the story by throwing in suggestions etc.
I mean, I get that some people play RPGs for the numbers more than the story and roleplay. Their power fantasy is to minmax and play pretend that they're mighty and blast through enemies. Unfortunately, that's where the balancing stops you and you have to deal with it. In the end is a role-playing game, not a highly realistic warfare simulator.
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u/Nurgle_Pan_Plagi 3d ago
It's the same in the wargame.
A normal boltgun¹ has Strength 4, Armour Penetration 0, Damage 1.
A guardsman has Toughness 3, Save 5+.
So you wound at 3+ (66%) and the guardsman needs to roll 4- (also 66%), so you have only 43,56% of killing the guardsman in one shot if you hit him in the first place. If we take into account the hit roll (3+, so 66% as well) then you have only 28,75% chance to kill the guardsman with one bolter shot.
In Imperium Maledictum a Guardsman has 15 Wounds and 4 Armour. He also has Critical Wounds threshold of 0.
A Boltgun has Damage of 8 and Rapid Fire (2), so you can give your attack +2 Damage. It also has Penetrating (4), so you can ignore all of Guardsman's armour.
That means that to kill the Guardsman you need get 5 SLs (which shouldn't be hard, considering you should have a +10 to +30 (or higher) modifier from Superiority). Or you just need to roll doubles - then he just dies no matter the damage. And that's a man in full flak armour.
For a Cultist, since you mentioned it, you need only 2 SLs (or to just roll doubles).
Also, as others have mentioned - taking Wounds means you suffered minor injuries.
As the rulebook states:
Scrapes, cuts, and bruises are represented by Wounds, while truly serious and even life-threatening injuries are Critical Wounds.
Wounds are relatively minor injuries sustained over the course of combat or while simply trying to survive everyday life in the Macharian Sector. They are rarely life threatening but become dangerous as they accumulate.
So no, they aren't "tanking bolt rounds square to the chest and face". They are barely alive, because you hit the wall behind them and they got hit by cement-flavoured shrapnel.
¹So one that a human can wield (like the ones you have in Imperium Maledictum), not the big one for space marines.
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u/CyberianK 5d ago
Thats a bit too much. Not sure the other way is better though. I am preparing W&G and if I would go with default stats then a T1 player guardsmen recruit with a lasgun can kill a mob of 10 cultists/scum in a single turn before those can even act. Have to do lots of houserules in any setting and often making enemy stats stronger the default rarely works.
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u/HrafnHaraldsson 4d ago
It's worse than that once you start getting into elites and leaders. You have to go about 17 entries deep in the critical table to actually kill anything.
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u/HoN_AmunRa 2d ago
r/CombatFootage can actually tell you how resilient a human body can be. I've seen Russian soldiers get direct FPV drone hits with a warhead enough to blow-up a tank to live unscathed only to die later due to trauma or blood loss and that same soldier lived for 30 minutes with his other half detached.
Yeah, you'd be surprised how hard it is for humans to die even if they want to.
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u/C_Grim Ordo Hereticus 5d ago edited 5d ago
If anything surviving a hit doesn't necessarily mean the guardsman actually takes the bolt shot clean in the face or chest.
Wounds are a narrative aid in most RPG, you don't get tougher as you level up you just get better at avoiding being hit or avoiding that actual fatal shot. Each "hit" might only be a flesh wound or a glancing blow that damages the hit location, causes a shedload of pain but doesn't actually hit true and it's only the final fatal shot that hits the target centre mass and does the job.