Still: you had to houserule to make things work again. That means something was missing.

Kiton said:

Well no, Dark Heresy was never meant to include mass combat - it's an investigative sci-fi/horror game with skirmish level tactical combat and potentially vehicle scale narrative combat.

Kiton said:

Of course it was. Space combat was also missing, and so was aerial dogfighting rules, or rules for piloting war titans, or playing with everyone being Tau. That's simply because no rulebook with a finite number of pages can cater to absolutely everything so it has to limit itself to its main focus. If you want to go outside that then more power to you, but you're gonna have to work it out yourself. That's why you're the GM in the first place.

I don't think we're looking at the same angle here, given the sarcasm.

What I saw, looking at Nameless2all's post, wasn't "we were lacking a horde system", but rather, "because things like lasguns can't reliably take a normal man down in one or two hits like they're supposed to and get shrugged off almost half the time entirely if he's got Flak, I had to invent mooks."

In other words, the weapons involved were so unimpressive he felt the need to *upgrade* killing weaker targets into a coin-flip, just so they'd go down reliably.

Kiton said:

I wasn't trying to be sarcastic and I apologize if I came as such. However, an important detail from Nameless2's post was that he was thrusting his players into massive combats and, as any GM can testify, using large numbers of enemies in almost any system bogs it down insufferably. Thats why 4th Ed. has Minions, mooks that are as deadly as any monster their level but go down in a single hit.

You also have to remeber that the PCs are "normal men", and no one wants to spend the better part of an afternoon making a char only to have it go down in two hits from one of the weakest guns in the game.

I know I'll be using a modified version of the horde rules for my game. Add an extra d10 for every 20 maginute instead of every 10.

JuankiMan said:

Actually yes and no Kiton.  I believe the weapons in DH are almost true representations of damage that can be inflicted to an unarmoured human being, while playing a sci-fi RPG.  Nothing can be perfect though.  Just as in real life with my trusty M-4, if I shoot at a moving, weaving, target that is shooting back at me, I'm more than likely going to wing him with one direct hit, but with two direct hits I will definitely kill him or cause severe enough damage to incapacitate him.

And this falls along the lines of what JuankiMan inferred from my statement.  For me, as a GM, I like to have my players feel that they are the story and focus of my game, and not get bogged down by the rules and combat scenarios.  So, given the fact that I had large amounts of NPC's going after the PC's, I wanted combat to be part of the story, not The story.  In most DH campaigns, the combat scenes are small scale, and are almost always The story, so sticking with the stats they have listed is usually preferable (except in Maggots in the Meat, but that's for a different thread).  My experience was an exception, as JuankiMan elegantly explained it.

As with any game, it's the experience and joy of playing it that matters, not the rules.  If you need to change something to make it more enjoyable, then have at it.  That is a sign of good GMs and groups working together.  But remember, that change doesn't mean it was broken and needed fixing, it's just that it wasn't tailored to your style of play.  Happy gaming Kiton.

 I think a lot of the issue stems from the fact that the tabletop doesn't have variable rates of fire for the guns; the ranged fire action doesn't usually represent a single volleyed shot by your soldiers. Indeed, your guardsmen who is taking 3 lasgun hits to down will be in critical damage in 1 round if the other guy is shooting in bursts, which, when up close, he should be doing. That is without taking into account variable setting for a little more punch, and the additional chances of righteous fury.

Furthermore, if guard flak armor can't reliable save a man from at least one shot of the most common weapons in the galaxy, than what is the point in wearing it? Modern soldiers don't usually die from single rounds unless the shooter gets lucky (righteous fury) or takes time to aim (called shot or accurate quality).