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Now that it's been confirmed in the Regimental Standard post, I thought it would be fitting if we all shared stories of epic Lasgun: King of Weapons shots. Be it on the tabletop, in a video game, books, or in a RPG session!

For me, the only thing capable of piercing the Emperor blessed bulwark that is tactical dreadnaught armor is the Lasgun: King of Weapons. I'm serious my Kill per wound ratio against terminators is at it's best with Lasgun: King of Weapons.

Another time, in a game of Dark Heresy, my guardsman character was fighting off a ambush from a chaos space marine. Seeking to distract the traitorous fiend so that my ally could use the warp against him, I cranked my Lasgun: King of Weapons to full power and laid down suppressing fire.
I rolled a critical. This was back in DH 1 with exploding dice, and in the end my suppressing fire ended up suppressing the marine into paste. 31dmg.

There you have it. Now share your own tales so that the king of weapons may be satisfied!

How broad is the definition of a lasgun? I did some fancy things with hotshots.

Lasgun: King of Weapons

In Shattered Hope from the Dark Heresy Book, Sek the Voice's men attack and a group with one of the Carrying a large bomb is heading toward the Acolytes... The groups Assassin fires a single his trusty 'Weapon of the Gods', hitting the bomb dead on causing a massive explosion, that takes out the entire group

I once shot my Lasgun into a thermal exhaust port, blew up a small moon.

 Talamare wrote:
I once shot my Lasgun into a thermal exhaust port, blew up a small moon.

Many 6's were rolled that day

Running a training game for a new player, three models in range of a three man terminators unit, all 3 hit, all three wound, I then proceed to roll triple ones.

His first game ended in a tabling of an experienced player by the end of turn 3 (250 points)

Lasguns, the king of weapons, are indeed the most potent of all weapons.

(I've heard recently they may also be used to destroy titans as well as they do xenos flyers in the holy doctrines of the uplifting primer)

I remember seeing the orks just over the horizon when the squad went prone and we opened up on them. I honestly didn't know if I was even hitting anything half the time.

Another lot grew closer, they were wielding axes and stuff, I engaged them and there were getting close enough now that I was sure I had to be hitting them but they didn't react to the shots, eventually though they dropped one by one, but I think that was more of a team effort than anything I did, if we didn't have the numbers we would all be dead, it was scary s tuff.

- My experience playing a 40k Mod for Operation Flashpoint.

Well, with "anything can hurt anything else" I'm sure we'll see stories of lasguns taking down Titans in 8th (after thoroughly tenderizing them with actual anti-tank weapons at least).

Though in Only War, the Imperial Guard spinoff of Dark Heresy, the humble lasgun can be tuned up quite a bit. Break out your pocket protectors, it's math and rules-lawyering time!

Let's go ahead and establish some baselines for those unfamiliar.

Standard Lasgun damage: 1d10+3 AP0

DR: Damage reduction, how Only War/Dark Heresy does armor and toughness. Typically the sum of your armor and toughness bonus, this is a flat value subtracted from any incoming damage. A Guardsman would have around 7-9, a Space
Marine would have around 15-20, the front of a Chimera is 30, the front of a LRBT is 40.

AP: this is subtracted from DR, the same way DR is subtracted from damage.

Hitting in Only War/DH: Percentile, you roll a d100 and try to get under a target number. Positive modifiers raise the target number, making hitting easier, negative modifiers lower the target number to make it harder. Beating the target number is one "degree of success", you get another degree for every 10 you beat it by. This will be relevant later.

With those bits of info you can see how effective a bog standard lasgun is in that system. Not very! Let's go about changing that.

To start with, lasguns in Only War have power settings. The trade-off is simple: ammo for damage and armor piercing. 2x ammo consumption gets you a measly +1 damage. 4x ammo consumption gives you +2 damage and +2AP. Horribly inefficient, but hey going for max already gets us wounding the low end of a space marine on 8+, and we're just getting started.

Ranged Volley: this is an Order that anyone can issue that causes your Comrade (think of them like a Familiar from D&D, but better at catching bullets for you) to grant you a +5 to ballistic skill. However, this is mostly here to combo with other things later on.

The Sergeant class has an ability called Get Them!, which basically can add +4 damage to the entire party's ranged attacks as part of a Ranged Volley order. So we're sitting at +6 damage +2 pen now, getting warmer!

Now, there's a weapon trait in Only War called Accurate. It gives you +10 to hit, but more importantly, on a Basic weapon (which the Lasgun is), for every two degrees of success you get a whole 1d10 extra damage! (up to a cap of 2d10). But wait, the Lasgun doesn't have accurate. Not to worry, in Hammer of the Emperor, an expansion book for Only War, there's rules for making alternate patterns of weapons. You can stick Accurate on any ranged weapon, in exchange for also sticking some kind of negative trait on there. A good one is Delicate, which is just a 10% chance that the gun will be slightly more annoying to fix when it jams. Lasguns only have a 1% chance of jamming in the first place, so it's a downside that can be practically ignored! We will get to how we're supposed to get a whole 4 degrees of success out of a ballistic skill that's 40 at best when 0 always fails later. For now, let's take a look at our bonus damage so far: 2d10+6 +2AP, smokin'!

While we're sitting here in the pattern rules though, why don't we also toss in +2 damage when aiming. We are planning to aim after all. Total: +2d10+8 +2AP.

Moving on, let's take a look at talents shall we? There's quite a few that will be relevant here.

From Only War:
Marksman: No range penalties, only useful indirectly, but useful nonetheless.

Mighty Shot: Add half your ballistic skill bonus (which is Skill/10) to damage. It has a requirement of 40 so you'll need some good rolling or some character development to get it, but hey if you qualify that's +2 damage. It adds up. Total: +2d10+10+2AP.

From Hammer of the Emperor:
Lasgun Volley: Remember your Sergeant and his Ranged Volley order? This talent lets you get another +1 damage for each Comrade participating in the order, up to +3. Either get your friends to pitch in with the power of teamwork, or multiclass into a Commander to pick up some spares for yourself. Total: +2d10+13+2AP.

Las Weapon Mastery: Las weapons do +1 damage for every 2 degrees of success beyond the first. However, we'll be tallying this into the total once we determine just what our target number is.

Ambush: Attacks against unaware targets do +1 damage for every 2 degrees of success beyond the first.

So, what is this target number then? Well, let's say we've got ballistic skill 40 just to make sure we can pick up Mighty Shot. At the most basic level that's our target number to hit, but that's before modifiers.
Accurate already gives us +10, and let's toss a red dot sight on there for another +10. Firing a single-shot also gives +10, and taking a half-action to aim first gives +10 yet again. Throw in the ranged volley order, and we're looking at a target number of 85.

So, we can score up to 8 degrees of success (beyond the first you get for just hitting) if we roll (very, very) well! At higher levels this can be boosted even more, but I'm keeping this fairly low-level because this is already getting long.

8 degrees of success gives us +4 damage each from Las Weapon Mastery and Ambush. Bringing the bonus damage up to 2d10+21 with 2AP.

Add in the lasgun's base damage, and we're looking at a total of 3d10+24 with 2AP, for a max of 54+2!

But if you're willing to REALLY lawyer it up, and your GM is a bit gullible, remember that comment about how multiclassing a Commander could let your Sergeant get more than one Comrade? Well you can get up to five. Now, the Sergeant's Get Them! ability was written before the Commander, or any source of multiple comrades, existed. So, what is says is that your Comrade, under the effect of a Ranged Volley order, is granting +4 damage and +5 to hit. A little creative reading could argue that if you have five comrades you would get the bonus from each of them, totaling up +20 damage and +25 to hit. Which also means 2 more degrees of success for your Talents. That particular interpretation can bring you all the way up to 3d10+42+2AP.

At that point you've gone past "can damage the front of a LRBT", and more into "Eats LRBTs for breakfast" territory. Though of course, a sensible GM would likely rule that they probably did only intend for you to get that +4 and +5 once, and therefore the most reasonable interpretation is that they shouldn't stack.

But true red-blooded Guardsmen know the truth. Pierce the heavens with your lasgun!

(edit: belatedly realized that I had only added 8 damage instead of the 18 I was supposed to in the last part, the correct total is 42, not 32)

And I thought I was smart getting a BS55 equiv Character on Creation in Dark heresy..


But then a again what are you rank 5/6 do be able to pull that off?
Basically a Imperial Hero in your own right at that point

Back in Second Edition I was playing as IG against eldar and this autarch had a 2+ rerollable save. He was one of the last few units and I shot my remaining units at it him trying to get the slay the warlord at the time with the objective cards. Nothing he survived with one wound.I had a Leman Russ Crew member that bailed out and survived and he had a las pistol. The other player said "its not gonna do anything" If I didnt make this shot i lose the game. But Johnny the Tank Commander aimed that pistol at this autarch puffing his chest out taking an entire punisher cannon worth or shots to the chest and not even wincing. He fires that las pistol HITS. 6 on the wound! He rolls his 2+ rerollable. 1 1. Got damn head shot right where the armor wasnt Johnny put that flash light hit and won me the game.

My Only War game had a full-power lasgun blast through cover and insta-gib the target, who was leaning out to take potshots at the shooter with her own full-power lasgun.

Too bad the target was a PC.

I've once shot a grot blasta at a flying daemon prince of tzeench. Hit him, wounded him, he proceeded to fail his re-rollable save, than a re-rollable test to see if he falls from the sky, took a wound on the way down, failed a re-rollable save again and died as those were his last 2 wonds (the rest were taken away with perils).

Grot blasta - king of weapons alongside a lasgun!

Best so far was 6 remaining veterans over watching a terminator captain and taking 2 wounds off, killing him outright.

This was after 3 chimeras and I think a valkyrie had fired everything at him the turn before, to no consequence.

I blew up a building with my hotshot lasgun in OW

Oh and ross, you forgot another lasgun mastery that lowers the Dodge roll of your target