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Just a quick little concept of mine.

Railbolt Rifle
Range: 30" / Type: Rapid Fire 1 / S: 5 / AP: -1 / D: 1 /Each time an attack is made with this weapon on an unmodified wound roll of 6, improve the attack's AP characteristic by 2.

This could apply to almost every Bolt weapon, except maybe the pistol variants: even the T'au haven't managed to make a working "Rail Pistol".

Inspiration taken from a few sources:
- the film "Eraser"
- the Rail Rounds used by the Assault Rifle from "Section 8 Prejudice" (an underrated PC game)
- the new Aeldari Shuriken ability

Thoughts? I know the Imperium are a bunch of Technophobes and Ideophobes, but hear me out.

Seems like a fix for a problem that doesn't exist.

Why would Astartes get this?

Usually 'hear me out' is accompanied by the reasons people should.

This is a better bolt rifle for no reason. No fluff, lore, mechanics, or even explanation for the higher strength or random bonus AP

Gently agree with the others. I don't think this proposal would really be broken, but it also doesn't seem like an innately helpful change. Mechanically, it adds bloat to a faction that already has a million bolter variants and easy access to AP -2 bolters.

From a lore angle, we'd be talking a big change involving the most iconic weapon in the franchise.

If you wanted to homebrew your own chapter that has access to special bolters for whatever reason, go for it. But this seems like an idea that has a short list of cons but an even shorter list of pros.

Shingaion wrote:

This could apply to almost every Bolt weapon, except maybe the pistol variants: even the T'au haven't managed to make a working "Rail Pistol".

Shingaion wrote:

Thoughts? I know the Imperium are a bunch of Technophobes and Ideophobes, but hear me out.

I think you may be confused about how weapon profile changes work, background vs. game mechanics.

If the designers want a weapon to be better, they can just change the stat line, and the explanation is that it's still the same weapon. It's simply that the previous stat line didn't adequately reflect the weapon.

Otherwise, "But what if the Imperium decided to replace all of their bolt weapons with new, better weapons?" ranks right up there with "But what if the Emperor woke up?" Counting the number of angels dancing on the head of a pin is more productive.

Nah this ain't it, dawg.

If anything they should “eraser” some units and weapons from the bloated codex.

Shingaion wrote:
Just a quick little concept of mine.

Railbolt Rifle
Range: 30" / Type: Rapid Fire 1 / S: 5 / AP: -1 / D: 1 /Each time an attack is made with this weapon on an unmodified wound roll of 6, improve the attack's AP characteristic by 2.

This could apply to almost every Bolt weapon, except maybe the pistol variants: even the T'au haven't managed to make a working "Rail Pistol".

Inspiration taken from a few sources:
- the film "Eraser"
- the Rail Rounds used by the Assault Rifle from "Section 8 Prejudice" (an underrated PC game)
- the new Aeldari Shuriken ability

Thoughts? I know the Imperium are a bunch of Technophobes and Ideophobes, but hear me out.

it does not seem to make much sense to add this rule, maybe as some kind of specialist ammo for your own custom chapter.

The entire concept of a RAILGUN is to slam a solid bullet into something at hyper velocity. It ceases to be a bolter at that point. Which is a rocket accelerated explosive round with an AP tip. So these are mutually exclusive terms. It’s either a RAILGUN or a bolter but it won’t be both.