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and why? (fluff wise and rules wise)

without diving into my attic, it struck me that the first time i can remember a rule resembling 'gets hot' was in the 2nd ed chaos codex, when CSM deliberately overcharged their plasma guns for more killiness.

so why did it get changed to include everyone (bar eldar and tau ofc) i'm guessing its just to balance them, because otherwise they might be overpowered

The explanation fluff wise is that the marines don't have a proper cooling system for their plasma weapons, but think its okay due to the sheer power they possess. Tau sacrifice killyness, to borrow a term from Orks, for proper cooling systems. No idea about Eldar.

Plus elder don't really have "Plasma" guns if I recall, I'd have to check in the codex but I believe the closest to plasma you get is a star cannon. Unfortunately the elder also sacrifice killyness and they are way overpriced.

In 2nd edition and Rogue Trader, plasma weapons just had to spend a turn recharging between firings. Plasmaguns were sustained fire weapons that also had a chance of jamming. Only Plasma Cannons had a low power setting that allowed them to be fired every turn. 3rd edition brought the hyper-aggressive CSM plasma weapons to everyone else, introducing the chance to fire every turn and the risk of overheating. Looks like someone back in 1998 discovered the fun of jumpering out the overtemperature relays

The idea is Imperial Plasma Guns are really really really strong but they have a chance to explode from lack of cooling.

The Tau have less power behind them, but they are safer to use.

I don't think the Eldar have "Plasma". They have....weird weapons....I don't know too much about the Eldar

As has been said, they basically game all the Imperials the archaic but powerful versions of Plasma weapons from the Chaos Marine Codex so the game would be more deadly, and they wanted the Imperials to have more of a grimdark feel, which evidently "safe" plasma weapons didn't do.

The skirmish game Necromunda is from 2nd edition, and all the plasma in that game are the standard 2nd Edition Imperial plasma weapons that players of that edition of 40K were familiar with.

Eldar always had plasma weapons, from Rogue Trader onwards. They were just of the safe variety, rather than the Chaos version. The "Starcannon" is meant to be an Eldar-themed Plasma Cannon.

Should also note that the Eldar and Tau do not think innovation is a sin.

"Adept Tenzso, what are you doing to that holy plasma pistol?"

"I'm improving the cooling system so Chief Librarian Ezekiel doesn't nearly blow a hole in the side the Rhino again."

"HERESY!"

*edit*

Corrected my booze mistakes

Nerobellum wrote:
Should also note that the Eldar and Tau do not thinking innovation is a sin.

"Adept Tenzso, what are you doing to that holy plasma pistol?"

"I'm improving the cooling system so it doesn't blow up in Chief Librarian Ezekiel doesn't nearly blow a hole in the side the Rhino again."

"HERESY!"

How ironic. Burned at the stake for making an upgrade so people stop burning themselves.

i play tau and right now i have the biggest troll smile on my face.

5th ed plasma made a little more sense to me;

Imperial tech is advanced, but not very well understood by the average user, and suffers from issues of scale. Basically, the Imperials build big, and struggle to make smaller version of existant technology. Hence, in 5th ed, vehicle based plasma didn't get hot; it had the power supply of the whole vehicle to maintain proper coolant and such, but making a suitable infantry based weapon was more difficult; they can't make a small enough power source to both create a powerful enough plasma projectile AND keep it cool and stable.

Besides, it's not like the plasma gun explodes; it's usually explained that it overheats and becomes unusable for an extended period of time, or emergency venting of superheated plasma disables the user.

The gun itself is fine, just needs some holy oils and such, which is really what the IoM cares about.

When you look at the variety of FW produced plasma vehicles, it seems to hold up; tank and titan mounted plasma weapons only get hot if they fire on certain overcharged settings; otherwise they're quite stable. It just requires a tank's or larger power supply to keep them stable.

I think the change from 2nd Edition slow-plas weapons was mainly a playability issue. Firing once every other turn is a huge downside and is actually kind of boring. It also makes every failure count for double. If you missed or jammed then the weapon was useless, not only on your own turn, but also for you next one (and in the case of a Jam it remained useless for an extra turn). But GW likely wanted to keep the risk-factor. So the easy choice is to retcon everything back to Chaos Mk1 plasma weaponry.

As a plasma-lover I actually agree with the decision. It is rare for a game to balance out firing every other turn successfully without making the weapon underpowered in comparison to just about everything. And it is even harder to make them non-boring as well.

I think overheating was a good idea on them, and I say this as someone who still quite likes 2nd Edition. But if I were still working on my house rules for it, then removing the wait-period from plasma would be close to the top of the list (along with removing all the random movement!).