As the title says, the Heroic ability is wasted on units with Heavy Weapons compared to units using other weapon types. This is because one of the more useful abilities that Heroic grants – extra attacks with quick actions using action points – isn’t usable in almost all situations with Heavy Weapons. This is because Heavy Weapons are slow-loading, which means that they can only perform one attack per activation.
As a result, it’s never worth using Heroic on a unit wielding a Heavy Weapon because the high cost of Heroic (60 pts) is always better spent using it on a unit wielding a different weapon type (rifle, pistol, or melee). Thoughts? Agreements/disagreements? Perhaps the designers wanted to discourage players from combining Heroic and Heavy Weapons?
In my case, I think that units with Heavy Weapons should be equipped with a second weapon in order to be able to make 2 attacks in the same turn, so in this case the limitation you describe wouldn’t exist.
In addition, Heroic units gain a lot of useful features like luck, movement/search/etc quick actions and one extra health point.
…Except that a unit with two Heavy Weapons AND Heroic is going to be fairly expensive, and will still only be able to take a maximum of 2 shots a turn…is it actually worth it?
Yeah I can imagine even a relatively cheap sidearm could be useful for those additional attacks, but for the cost of making a model heroic you could get another model to help you out (even if it’s just a basic settler/knight patrol/super mutant). I suppose it might depend more on the scenario which is more useful
It’s situational and to personal taste.
But I feel a Heroic unit (read: Nate) with a minigun, a .44 backup gun and a machete is a force to be reckoned with. The minigun has a lot of damage potential and can seriously hurt even heavily armored foes, so it’s not about getting even more shots out of it via Heroic - it’s about getting into good firing positions! And with Heroic, I can squeeze in that little bit of extra movement, even more so if I use a potential second Quick Action to Prepare and then move some more if triggered.
Putting aside that that’s pretty expensive points-wise, this is illegal. The errata 2.0 says that a model can’t even fire more than one heavy weapon in the same activation (unless some exception applies, like the Sentry Bot).
That seems like a lot of extra gear (and the points associated with them) to make up for the heavy weapons’ shortcomings. Why wouldn’t I simply get a Heroic unit with just one weapon (like a laser rifle) and not have to get 3 weapons to cover all situations (and able to focus that weapon skill on your best SPECIAL stat)? And please correct me if I’m wrong, but unlike heavy weapons, you can get up to 4 attacks per activation with just that one weapon (2 regular attack actions, plus a quick action attack using AP, plus a reaction shot using AP). This seems a lot stronger than just one attack with a heavy weapon.
I also disagree that miniguns (and similarly, the gatling laser) can seriously hurt heavily armored foes – in fact, it’s the opposite. Units with strong armor (like power armor, deathclaws, sentry bots, and assaultrons (only vs miniguns)) are completely immune to miniguns/gatling lasers at long range because those weapons only do 1 base damage (with no effect dice) at long range, which is completely negated by the strong armor. At short range, miniguns/gatling lasers need some luck on their lone black die to even do any damage as the strong armor is still eating 1 guaranteed damage for each of their 5 shots.
It’s 11 points of extra gear. Not that much, I think.
And really, I’d give Nate a machete no matter what other gear he’s lugging about, simply because it’s nice to have a melee weapon in case you get rushed. Plus, he’s pretty good in close combat, too.
And nobody is immune to miniguns. I have 5 attempts to hit you - and after the third hit, I have my critical meter charged up and can hit you for 3 damage with a critical hit next. And since each subsequent hit also counts as 1 point of AP and the critical hit is +2 AP, I’m pretty sure I ignore your regular armor as well. So at short range I could potentially put in up to 7 damage, reduced to 6 by your strong armor. At long range, it’s still up to 5 damage, reduced to 4.
But I agree that trying to chew through enemies with strong armor is not what you’ll use a minigun for. But folks with good regular armor are fair game.
Are you sure that’s how miniguns work? There are a couple of issues here:
Does the critical attack replace 1 of the 5 minigun attacks, or the entire attack action of 5 attacks? I thought it was the latter.
The strong armor doesn’t reduce 1 damage for the entire attack action. Rather, it reduces 1 damage for each of the 5 minigun attacks. That’s why models with strong armor are immune to miniguns at long range - the minigun only does 1 base damage with no extra effect dice. Also, the armor penetration bonus for successive minigun hits doesn’t go through strong armor - it only provides an armor penetration icon. Armor penetration icons do not penetrate strong armor (Rulebook Pg. 21).
You only get a maximum of one critical point for the 5 attacks total for the minigun. So you wouldn’t fill up the critical meter after the 3rd of the 5 minigun attacks per action. Rather, you’d have to wait 3 activations to fill up the minigun’s critical meter.
The other issue with equipping extra gear is that you’re diluting the frequency of your criticals. The critical meter for each weapon builds up separately from each other. So if you’re splitting your attacks among separate weapons with a Heroic character, then each weapon builds up critical hits that much slower.
Mini Gun and Gatling laser are strong against low profile units. Missile Launcher is strong against any unit and helps you scatter the enemy troops as otherwise the missile would hit multiple targets…
I have seen missile launcher taking out 2 enemy units as its first action due to bad deployment of the opponent - thats easily worth the caps it costs…
Sappy69 is right about the way Miniguns work. A Shoot action is either to fire using Walked Fire (so 5 separate shots) OR to use the Critical if already fully charged. Only 1 Critical Point can be gained from using Walked Fire (if at least 1 shot hits, but not 1 from each shot). APs are the same too and only 1 AP can be earned from Walked fire even if you roll the AP icon on the Skill Dice 5 times. Even if a CP is earned from the multiple shots of Walked Fire which makes the total CPs equal to the weapon’s Critical Rating, using that Critical can not take place until the next Shoot action using that weapon.
Each shot of a Walked Fire weapon is resolved separately so any Strong Armor bonus the target has will count versus every shot.
Ah, I see.
I only remembered the Critical Attack rules from page 53, which say: When a model who (1) has a card showing a Critical icon and (2) uses a weapon showing a Critical Meter successfully hits a non-friendly model with an attack (regardless of damage caused), 1 CP token is placed next to the weapon card that was used.
But I stand corrected in that regard, though I’d still argue that you can earn more CP by rolling the CP on the skill die.
And I think we have a case of miscommunication regarding AP.
I was refering to Armor Piercing (which should be Armor Reduction, so my bad) and it looks like everyone else thought it’s Action Points. Not what I meant though.
In any case, like I said before, I agree that the minigun is not a good choice vs. folks with strong armor. However, I still disagree that it is a bad choice for a Heroic unit. De gustibus non est disputandum.
Hi. You’re right that normally a weapon can gain 2 CPs if an attack hits the target and the skill dice shows the CP icon. However, Walked Fire has an exception to this - on p.47 it says that ‘Walked Fire weapons can gain a maximum of 1 Critical Point during each Shoot Action’. I should have made it more clear that this is an exception for Walked Fire weapons.
In case it’s of interest, the reason for only allowing 1 CP to be gained per Shoot action for Walked Fire weapons is that it’s quite likely that the player will roll at least 1 CP icon out of their 5 shots. As a result, I had the choice of either (a) allow 1 CP to be gained from the CP icon (max. once) plus 1 CP for hitting the target which would mean the weapon would often gain 2 CPs per shot, or (b) just have a 1 CP maximum total. I decided to go with (b) to keep the critical rating low (rather than have lots of CPs pile up on the card), to make the rolls slightly faster as no extra CP tokens need to be taken, and so players didn’t need to remember if a CP token had been taken yet or not during the 5 rolls. If I had gone with (a), the weapon’s critical rating would be higher as the CPs would be accumulated more quickly than other weapons. I hope that helps explains things.
I agree. It’s true extra APs from VATS and the Action Point Use icon for Attack can’t be used for attacking with the heavy weapon if already fired using a normal action (although it could allow the model to Move twice using normal actions and then fire using an AP). As some people have said, an AP could be used to fire other weapons or for movement, plus they get to use Luck, Criticals, have an extra Health and VATS. However, having a heavy weapon does add some restrictions (even if not heroic).
Overall, it’s down to personal preference so I think everybody’s points-of-view are interesting. Making a model Heroic or maybe having another model depends on the situation too and the scenario may affect that. It’s these choices that I hoped the game would deliver so there isn’t a ‘solution’ to winning.
To be more precise, miniguns and gatling lasers grant 1 damage reduction icon for each consecutive hit. Damage reduction icons reduce regular armor, but don’t affect Strong Armor. This is why Strong Armor units are immune to miniguns/gatling lasers at long range, and nearly impervious to them even at short range. If you use such weapons against a Deathclaw, you may as well bring a pea shooter.
