Lasgun options in Dark Heresy

Question

In the various Dark Heresy books that offer player equipment there are a large, diverse number of lasguns. Most classes get the option to be proficient with basic las weapons.

1. Which 'Basic' class lasgun is best for dealing with a single armored target? (Assume Armor 3 all locations, Toughness bonus 2)

2. Which 'Basic' class lasgun is best for dealing with a group of 4-6 targets? (Assume Armor 1, Toughness bonus 2, grouped close together.)

(Ignore the pistol and heavy class weapons. We would all love to be issued lascannons and multilasers but it isn't happening.)

Answer 1

The Inquisitor's Handbook appendix has a listing of all the guns in the DH core and IH, sorted by type; I'm just running off stats listed there, under the assumption that if you're fighting guys with TB 2 and armor 3 then anything from Ascension or Rogue Trader is out of your league.

Armor 3, TB 2 is actually pretty weak - even your average Guardsman has armor 4 all locations and a TB of at least 3. Having said that, lasguns are mostly good for having lots of ammo, not so much for armor penetration, and you're either going to need some kind of hellgun or nonstandard ammo packs. Check out Hot-Shot Charge packs in the DH core, under "Ammo" - you have to reload after every shot no matter what the clip size is on your gun, but for that one shot you gain +1 Damage, +4 Pen, and Tearing. Can't be used with autofire, obviously, but put that in a long-las, take an aim action or two, and that'll kill things dead, fast, and cheap. (There's a big turn tax on it, obviously.) Or just point-blank full-auto with anything, that's usually pretty deadly.

If you're trying to kill lots of people, you'll need to be using full-auto fire, and your primary goals will be lots of BS (you need one success per hit, so if you want to hit four guys with one shot each, that's four successes you'll need) and full auto RoF (you can't take more shots than your RoF, obviously.) Full auto is not something that lasguns do lots of - they do semiauto, which is great for ammo conservation and terrible for racking up lots of hits - so short of a multi-laser, your options are (once again) a D'laku Hellgun (that's Skitarii standard-issue, so good luck getting your hands on one - easier to aspire to one of the hellguns in Rogue Trader core, which have AP 7 because that book came out after the 5th edition Imperial Guard codex) or a Minerva-Aegis Las Carbine (page 112 of IH - Scarce availability and a cost of 150 puts it a little bit above a long-las in terms of difficulty of obtaining, but it's a good all-around gun.)

Or, if you're willing to slum to pistol-class weapons, you could pick up a Fury-class laspistol, which is a personal favorite; the range is terrible (it's the same as a meltagun), but they're not TOO hard to find, and they have a full-auto rating.

Or you could just get a good autogun.

Answer 2

Using DH-only material, the D'laku Hellgun is the "best" weapon for both the situations you describe. It has higher AP than any other lasgun (AP 4) and an autofire option. It is Scarce on the Lathes (i.e. any major Forge World) and Very Rare elsewhere. It can be found in the Inquisitor's Handbook, pgs. 133-134.

Answer 3

A great basic las weapon you should be able to get a hold of that can seriously damage a single target would be a long las. Which is shocking considering it's damage is just 1d10+3 with absolutely no penetration or rapid fire capacity.

However in the Errata v3.0 released by Fantasy Flight Games the accurate trait, which the long las has on it, has been vastly improved (see Errata page 8). When the accurate trait is used on: 1) A basic weapon, 2) with an aimed action and, 3) with a single shot; then the attack gains an extra d10 for every 2 degrees of success up to 2 extra d10s. This dice bonus applies to the single attack so armor and toughness are only going to be applied once.

This means a long las with a simple red-dot sight is a deadly weapon even in the hands of a beginner sniper with a BS of 40. Given a standard action of aim+fire this would be the BS bonus breakdown: 1) Aim +10 2) Accurate +10 (because the weapon was aimed) 3) Red-dot sight +10 (because it's a single shot) 4) Short range +10 (usually the long las is fired at short range)

This would give a BS of 40+40 to be 80. With an average roll of 50.5 on a d100 we can expect 2 degrees of success on average giving an damage roll of 2d10+3.