In your example, the guy with the Lascannon would have BS 70 by that point and would be able to aim (+10) making it target roll 80 with no risk of perils. However, a Lascannon is much easier to dodge and needs reloading. It would probably be a Devastator with a long list of beneficial talents as well.

With the 2x option, it would be D10 + 20, pen 10 with a 35-36 pt average (including the pen). Hitting with 4 bolts on, say, power armor and toughness 50 guy body shot (armor 20), that would be 15-16 damage per bolt (well, 17-18 on the other locations). This would still scale too quickly. How about we drop the pen? That way, it would be a factor that would not scale (which would make it less cumulative) and make it more reasonable damage. Following the previously stated situation…

Smite --> D10 + 20 = 25-26. with an average of 4 bolts hitting = 20-24 damage with perils though harder to damage.

Lascannon --> 5d10 + 10 (avg 39) pen 10. that would be 29 damage that would be able to be dodged more easily but with no perils.

What do you think about that? Also, should there be a max number of bolts that can hit?

afterimagedan said:

That's a good point, I wasn't factoring in things like mighty shot and crack shot, which is an advantage to the devastator.

afterimagedan said:

Now that we've gone through the numbers, I would actually lean towards just lowering the damage back to 1d10+PR. Lowering the Pen has the disadvantage of making the weapon too weak at lower levels (to start with a unfettered attack would only be 1d10+6 with low pen, which just makes it flat worse than a bolter).

Using your example of toughness 50 with unnatural toughness and 10 armour, 1d10+PR is still doing 1d10 damage per hit (so average 5.5) and 4 hits on average, so 20-24 damage overall. This is actually not that much worse than the Lascannon, making for a very good utility power that the psyker doesn't even have to requisition.

I was thinking that having the psykers willpower bonus being the cap on hits (I think that's the way black crusade does it).

Naviward said:

borithan said:

To play devils advocate, compel has its limitation too. It doesn't work on tyranids, creatures with the machine trait (like dark mechanicum) and creatures with From Beyond (so daemons and some others). So while smite might not be favourable is some situations, you can end up with whole fights (or even missions if you're very unlucky) that compel can't be used in.

You really hit the nail on the head with the willpower check thing, I think it's a failure of a mechanic, as very quickly the psyker is able to pull powers off with no chance of failure and pretty much auto-win any opposed check (makes force weapons pretty broken too).

Don't get me wrong though, I think Smite and Compel are both horribly broken (and while we're at it add the blood lance blood angel power and the carcharodons Rending Maw from Honour the Chapter, if fact anything with PRd10 damage. Black Crusade is even guilty of this).

In fact, why argue between compel and smite. Let's embrace the power of AND. Blood angel librarian, compel, smite and blood lance. Doesn't matter where they are or who they are, the librarian will get you (well, unless it's a dark mechanicus assassin with dodge 100 standing 1 metre away, but that can't happen every game, right?). 

All psychic powers always fail on 91-100, no?

bogi_khaosa said:

Good point, that is still true (although with fate point reroll, that pretty much means failing 1% of the time unless you get really unlucky or have only 1 fate point). So not quite passing all the time, just nearly all the time (which admittedly can also be leveled at shooting once you get full auto bonus, close range, size bonus, e.t.c. often it's either hit or jam, which again, with fate points, doesn't happen much).

Naviward said:

Forgotten about Compel not working onc certain targets… I guess it is coloured by my experience, where the Librarian truthfully found there was stuff he would much rather do that bother casting Smite (compared to what some of the other characters could do it was a bit piffling unless he pushed it, and it didn't seem to be worth the half action to him. I think he mainly used it for horde killing), yet found that after aquiring Compel he kind of broke the combats. Not deliberately, and initially it was ok (2-3 guys compelled), but it did get to one fight where when he finally used Compel it kind of wiped the encounter clean away (he had been using a forcefield dome power, can't remember which, which did have an interesting balancing mechanicsm where the more powerful it was, the larger it was, and so he had a hard blimit on how big he could make it before it was useless, and the enemy could easily move into it to negate it).

I don't mind so much about Force Weapons working that way, as by the time you are utterly broken most weedy things are going to die one way or another anyway, and the really big guys generally need to fail really badly and the librarian needs to do really well to really total them in one go (not that that can't happen… a friend related an experience in his game where the librarian accidentally summoned a Greater Daemon, and then one shotted it the next turn as it failed its willpower roll so badly and the librarian did really well). But then I guess we only played to rank 6, so it might have gotten worse after that.

 Update: We tried the D10+PR Pen PR and max bolts at WP bonus last Thursday and I must say, everyone was really happy with it. He still did some very hefty damage but everyone (including the very critical Librarian) was very hay about the balance. The guy playing the Librarian loves games that are very difficult and challenging and he was very disappointed about how overpowered Smite was and was happy about the new fix. We will be finishing the mega combat we are in right now next Thursday and we will update our results again. 

afterimagedan said:

That's brilliant news, glad to hear that it works well in practice. Thanks for the update, hope the rest of the combat goes as well.

 Well seeing things are worked out, I was going to consider using Only War version of Smite. 

Manyfist said:

Sounds like an interesting idea. I don't have Only War yet, how is it different?

 For my game, that I'm ruling the librarians take psychic powers from black crusade(barring chaos ones of course).

Naviward said:

It's a Psychic Barrage which is like semi auto fire, +1 hit/2 DoS, D10+Psy Rating Pen 4 range of 20m X Psy Rating. 

Smite is indeed a powerfull power but it is made as a range attack and can be modiifed by a lot of parameters. Use them as GM, your NPC aren't PC stupid bots. And once a smite had been done theywill know that they have to be out of line of sight… or dodge.

Now if you want to fix smite make your player play in a fog witch use could them have from smite if they do not see their target.

Manyfist said:

That sounds fantastic and balanced, nice.