#lasguns

*Dreadnought explanation: The friend who wants to play one is actually the anti-powergamer of the group. He wants every single component of his drednought to malfunction catastrophically whenever possible, so he can be a paladin whose only reliable role in combat is to serve as cover for his allies. As for the build (2000 starting XP, considering the other PCs scale), i made the Guardsman a Krieger for flavor purposes mostly and to justify the particular lasgun pattern choice (as well as him not talking much). Weapon Specialist, two advanced into Ballistic Skill to clear 50, enabling him to pick up Las Weapon Expertise and Mastery Talents. Extra damage and, effectively, extra accuracy are yum. He’s been kitted out by a Rogue Trader but refuses to go against regulations, so instead he’s picked up a min-maxed Lucius-pattern lasgun with the Accurate quality, Red-Dot laser sight, Modified Stock, Customized Grip, which collectively makes it technically impossible for him to miss at short range (50 meters) with a Half-Action Aim. And because all those likely Degrees of Success (A) impose evasion penalties and (B) increase damage, in addition to the damage boost from High Impact and Mighty Shot plus Overload Mode and Overcharge packs, he can end up with 3 damage dice and a +16 to whatever those rolls turn out to be. Actually, I’m not entirely sure how high the damage can go. Las Weapon Mastery grants +1 damage for every 2 Successes on hit. So depending on what he’s shooting, he might be able to clear 50 damage with one lasgun shot.

Other minutiae: Yes, I’d be allowing Overcharge Packs to be used with Overload Mode. Does that make any sense? It’s not explicitly disallowed as far as I know, and furthermore from a mechanical standpoint that means halving your clip size and quadrupling ammo consumption (Lucius lasguns have a standard clip of 35 shots) for a grand total of +3 Damage and +2 Pen. In terms of Overcharge Pack + Overcharge Mode alone, that’s ultimately +2 Damage for a halved Clip at twice ammo expenditure. When you consider the kind of damage output of an equivalent Plasma weapon on Maximal mode, or the fact that in this setting, a Hellgun would probably be a standard weapon, I consider it to be merely absurd, but certainly not overpowered. He’d get 4 shots before having  to change modes to finish off the clip. 

at first his character was just a litmus test to compare damage output and such per round, but while trying to figure out the maximum damage numbers of a lasgun i had to factor in talents and gear and lasgun variable settings and all of a sudden i’ve created this monstrosity of an average joe with the grey Honda Civic of ranged weapons for this universe, but if that grey Honda Civic secretly had all its parts blisteringly polished and configured in an extremely not-obvious way.