WittyDroog said:

Consider that for Death Korps and similar units, the Comrades - guys with no special skills or value beyond the basic grunt - simply are more expendible than the PC character types. They are expected to die before allowing harm to come to the sergeant, the medic, the heavy weapons guy, etc. - because those guys have the special skills to get the mission accomplished. What special skills does the Comrade have to get the mission accomplished? None, so his noble sacrifice might be the only reasonable answer.

Outside of the metagame distinction that prevents it from ever happening, Comrades simply hope to survive long enough to develop the skills to become PC-like themselves.

HappyDaze said:

While I would freely admit that Comrades and "redshirts" are fairly synonomous, there is a HUGE distinction between that and deliberately using your comrade as a "meat shield"! Also, the experience spent on comrade orders I would consider lost when a new comrade replaced one lost for any reason. Comrades also have some fairly useful abilities even as listed. They can also carry stuff. Most Larger heavy weapons (Such as Autocannon and Lascannon) cannot be effectively moved by one person. Instead it is broken into to pieces of approximately equal weight to move it. In real life the Browning .50 cal. machine gun (A roughly analogous weapon to the autocannon) works like this.

Radwraith said:

Actually, a good Heavy Gunner can hail around even a Man-Portable Lascannon all alone without much problem. Oh and a Browing .50 is somewhere between the Lasgun and the Heavy Stubber. The Autocannon is roughly equal to a 50mm rapid firing solid projectile weapon.

I also told my friends that I shared the Comrade-usage of our party, and lots of people disliked it. The GM said that since the Commissar can kill a Comrade just because a PC dared to drop to 0 Wounds (removing 1D5 Damage from the PC and making him immune to Critical Damage for a Round) it is really weird to assume that wasting a Comrade when the situation turns hot is necessarily a bad thing. 

Radwraith said:

Having spent xp die with the Comrade will only ensure that such Advances are rarely taken, which isn't really going to help things, since without those Advances in play, the Comrades will offer even less benefit while alive and thus there's less incentive to try keeping them alive…

Having been in actual combat and served in the Marine Corps as a infantry men I can tell you that no matter how "grimdark" a battlefield may be using a comrade in arms is not in any way shape or form realistic.  The bond you build with the guy next to you is a tight one and even if you hate that fool outside of combat back in the "real world" you will lay down your life for him. That comrade could save your life someday.  In fact PC's are the "John Basilones" of the game, the guys who go to great lengths to save their compatriots and lay waste to the enemy. 

As far as heavy weapons, sure you could carry the equivalent of a .50 cal by yourself but you can not fire that thing without it's tripod and sure you could carry the tripod too, but what about the rounds a standard load is about 400 rounds.  Now consider that the gun weighs in around 84lbs the tripod is 44lbs and 100 rounds in a ammo can is 35lbs (now times that by 4) and you'll start to see that your a-gunner is important.  In fact a crew served weapon like the M2 .50 cal is operated in teams of not two but three (team leader, gunner, and a-gunner).

Anyone who intentionally is grabbing and throwing their comrades in front of fire is in my opinion thinking of them as a game mechanic and not a actual person.  In a role playing game you should be thinking about them as a person as far as I'm concerned.

Edit: A M2 .50 cal would not be between a lasgun and a heavy stubber.  A heavy stubber is closer to M240 medium machine gun.

DrNo172000 said:

Thankyou! Ive been saying for years that an M2 .50 would be far heavier (fully loaded) than a heavy stubber. Chambered in 12.7mm/.50 caliber.

Heavy stubber analogue in real life is a light support weapon, so chambered in something between 5.56mm/.22 and 7.62mm/.303.

Comparitively an autocannon is likely chambered similar to its real life counterparts, so chambered in roughly a 20mm/.78 caliber.

As such the conclusion can be drawn that an M2 would be somewhere between a heavy stubber and an autocannon in performance.

I'd envisage such a weapon to have the following statline.

Type: Heavy

Range: 150m

ROF: -/-/5

Damage: 1d10+5 Impact

Pen: 4 

Clip: 100

Reload: Full

Special: Tearing

Weight: 40kg

DrNo172000 said:

Finaly! Someone gets it! Yes, this is the root of everything, and it will go like this: Comrades are useless (as game mechanic) -> Players realize it -> Players invent "new uses" for them -> Players justify it (it will be easy) and turns the GM to their side -> "Meat Shield Cormades". And you can't even say that the players abuse the "family" feel - the PCs will do form a family, it is just one thing that they won't consider their Comrades as part of it. 

But yeah, I guess it is partially my failure too… I've got stuck with explaining Step 3…

DrNo172000 said:

Actually, it is. A Boltgun is equal to a 20mm full automatic grenade launcher (read its fluff - it effectively fires RPG-7 warheads!) and has roughly the same damage as a Heavy Stubber. And in my book, 12.5mm is between 7.65mm (lasgun/autogun) and 20mm. It is just one thing that in the Imperial Guard, people use the Heavy Stubber as a SSW. 

AtoMaki said:

To my knowledge no caliber has ever been given for a heavy stubber in a official source.  I am well aware that a boltgun fires a .75 caliber bolt (as you stated roughly 20mm).  Now keep in mind that a weapons caliber doesn't always have to be large to cause a lot of damage the M134 Mini gun which I don't think anyone would question it's damage dealing capability fires a 7.62x51mm round much smaller than the M2's 12.7x99mm. 

However I am not saying a heavy stubber is not a Ma Duece because of caliber but rather the heavy stubber can be fired standing while being held by a person.  That is simply impossible to do with the M2, it can only be fired mounted. 

But to put this back on track to a comrade discussion I think some of ya'll are missing the point on comrades.  Sure they only do a few things mechanically for the player but you are forgetting that they are more importantly a unique game and roleplay tool for the GM.  I fully intend to give my players comrades back stories and use them in roleplay situations with the demeanor as a guideline.  I'll also be using them as a way to give hints to the players when they are stuck.  Suddenly private schmuckatelly has a great idea to share with the squad kind of thing.  That way when one dies cause I rolled doubles too often and the players pull out that letter to his pregnant wife from his pocket and it's covered in blood they'll feel a impact by it.  Remember roleplaying games are much more than a combat mechanic.

DrNo172000 said:

Imperial Armour Volume 5/6 - Siege of Vraks Part 1/2: the DKoK heavy stubber uses 14mm "heavy rounds". Though in Part 2, the Vraksian heavy stubber uses 8.25mm "long rounds". So dunno, in the tabletop game, the lasgun/autogun has Strength 3 (from 10, and 10=nuke), while the Heavy Stubber has Strength 4… and the Autocannon has Strength 7…

DrNo172000 said:

A character can also fire an autocannon, a man-portable lascannon or even a plasma cannon while standing, and without any external support. It just takes a Bulging Biceps Talent…

AtoMaki said:

hahaha well I guess 40k is just low on realism (no duh right) as no human being could ever lift and fire a M2 .50cal heavy machine gun.

Didn't know about those imperial armour entries only thing I'd ever seen was the round being described as around the size of your thumb.  I'm guessing since there are two different entries "heavy stubber" is just a universal way of saying med to heavy machine gun.

AtoMaki said:

See, to me, this isn't even "cynicism and ruthlessness" - it's derpy and horribly metagame-y. The characters aren't treating them as actual soldiers would their colleagues, instead the players are gaming the system and trying desperately to justify it as "grim, dark and ruthless", to the extent of stopping the GM from trying to stop them from gaming the system.

It's the sort of metagaming crap I'd expect from my old (I mean about 6-7 years ago) group for DnD, and is exactly the reason I left - it's not roleplaying, or at least any version I'd put up with.

^Wow, you say taht like the COmrades would be the only opportunity to roleplay… Thank you, we like to explore our characters through their internal strifes, as they face the Monster within and go through the never-ending nightmare what is the Warhammer 40k universe. And in this case - as we found out - the Comrade serves better as the abusable underdog instead of the base material for some cheap and cliche drama (because lets face with it, it can go cheap and cliche very easy…). 

AtoMaki said:

I agree. It's a sad bit of fact that in RPGs if you want an NPC to be treated like a real character, the NPC needs to have stats like a real character (but not necessarily the same way of generating/building such stats and characters). The Comrades are mechanically just a few options and stat buffs for PCs, so that's going to color some players' perception of them as not being as 'real' as even the NPC Guardsman in the back of the book.

HappyDaze said:

At which point it becomes funny that Chaos Minions, who actually should be thrown ruthlessly in front of oncoming bullets, are given full stats…