(Aforementioned Tac here) The rounds being used against the tyrant guard are Vengeance rounds. The 9 pen still gets through basically all of their 10 armor, and felling is a super handy trait since they have UT. SB damage is 1d10+15 (1d10+9 + 2 for master crafted + 2 for Tac Solo Mode ability + 2 for Mighty Shot). I have the Master of Arms distinction to add another level of felling, but I didn't at the time, so we'll ignore that for now. I skip 6 of the 18 TB and there's 1 armor left unpenned, for a total DR of 13, making my wounds/hit 1d10+2 Tearing. 8 hits end up with an average of just over 80 wounds after averaging in RFs. I don't feel a tyrant guard should be impossible to damage with a bolter, but I definitely feel like it should have solidly entered the range where a bolter is sub-optimal. RAW, a Plasma Cannon will do 2d10+12 (and lets throw in 4 for quality and mighty shot, making it +16). It will fully pen the armor and then lose 18 from toughness, making it do 2d10-6, for an average of around 6 wounds. I think we can agree that's absurd, which is why we've buffed plasma from several different angles. Firstly, we buffed plasma across the board. We had already done this before the errata since a bolter did more than a plasma gun (per shot) even without special ammunition, but even with the errata bolter nerf and the plasma buff, it wasn't anywhere near enough. We basically added a d10 and felling to all plasma (relative to pre-buff), and then ended adding a couple points of damage to guns and pistols and Devastating to Cannons based on my modeling spreadsheet showing plasma to still be a subpar choice is most all situations. Final stats for the Plasma Cannon are 3d10+11 Pen 12 Blast(3), Devastating (1), Felling(1), Volatile. The final change was to have maximal up pen by 4 instead of 2 and increase Cannon Blast to 6 on maximal fire. In the end, you have the follow against a tyrant guard: Armor fully penned, 12 TB applies. Total damage is 3d10-1 with 2 hits. This gives around 35-40 wounds, making it about 1/2the SB damage. Firing on maximal, you then up to 4d10-1 with 3 hits, giving you around 70 wounds, pretty similar to the SB. The advantage is then of course that blast might hit something else, so the Plasma Cannon has succeeded in having a niche. Another attack greatly affected by the change is smite. We've mostly okay with this, because librarians have pretty poor damage options vs. masters. Getting a few more hits with smite goes a long way. It's actually started to become an issue with pushed smites, though even without the change the blast template just starts becoming silly at middling ranks. We ended up changing the blast to be rank meters instead of PR, but that's really more of a stop gap, since that makes smite kind of suck at early levels. Something like PR/2 rounded up might fit better.

Our Killteam was having a discussion about if and when you can benefit from any 2 squad mode abilities at the same time. In the core, it notes that you can only make or benefit from one squad mode action in any given turn, and proceeds to describe what a squad mode action is, explaining that they are abilities that "allow Battle-Brothers to take Actions outside of their normal Turn, such as moving, shooting, or making close combat attacks." From the description, some things would obviously be a Squad Action. "Bolter Assault", "Furious Assault", "Soak Fire", etc. all clearly involve an action outside of the normal turn. Other abilities, such as "Dig In" or "Lead by Example" aren't actions outside of the normal turn, and sound like they shouldn't be counted as "Squad Actions"; however, the final sentence of the "Squad Action" entry is "Unless otherwise stated, all benefits of Squad Mode Abilities are Squad Actions." Reading through all the Codex and Chapter Squad Mode abilities in both the core and RoB, none of them are ever stated to not be Squad Actions. What are people's impressions on this? Did FFG just forget to note when something isn't a Squad Action? One particular absurdity that may or may not fall out of this depending on your reading is that after digging in, using a different Squad mode ability the next turn makes your bonus cover magically disappear. Another thing I wonder about is how to define "benefiting from a Squad Mode Action taken by another member of his Kill-team." If you were to make use of the "Soak Fire" ability, who has just burned up their Squad Action for the turn? I could interpreting that as only the one who declared the action, the one who declared it and the additional members in support range damage is split between, or all members splitting damage, including the target of the attack. The final one would seem like a reasonable RAW reading, given that the original target of the attack is certainly the one benefiting from the ability, but he's not benefiting in the sense of making the allowed action. He's a passive member who just stands there while Battle-Brothers fling themselves in front of him.

The weapon trait that everybody here seems to be forgetting is primitive. If you aren't going to admit that a bow is primitive, then for goodness sake, what is? Composite bow is already statted out in DH, they do 1d10+2 pen 1, accurate, primitive. I agree the Na'vi bows should do more due to size. People are pointing out that they should have sufficient pen to pop through plexiglass windows since they do in the movie, but that's not what pen is. Pen is how much armor they ignore. That window pretty did a decent job of stopping the arrow, and it had greatly reduced energy afterwards. All you can say is that the Pen+Damage exceed the cover of a plexiglass window, which probably is not even 4. Toxic is probably overly generous for their homebrew primitive poisons, but sure, we can splurge. If we want to give them a damage bonus for the arrows over humans, I think 2 is plenty. That's about as much advantage as DW weapons have over their DH Ascension counterparts. In the end, that gives the bow 1d10+4I Pen 1, Accurate, Primitive, Toxic. Their maximum roll is then going to be an accurate shot with all 10s, for a total of 34+1 pen. Hitting an SM in the head, they'll take off 15 from armor, then around 10 from their toughness bonus, leaving 9 damage and a moderately difficult toxic roll. That is fora 1 in 1000 aimed shot to a weaker part of the armor, mind you. An average aimed damage roll would be 21 with 1 pen, which wouldn't get through their toughness bonus.