When you roll number of initial attacks with ROF D3 guns? Is it at the begining of combat action simultanious to all random weapons or do you choose to use one gun and roll how many shots that gun have? And if so do you have to shoot all initial of that gun before moving to next one?
So available cases if we use war boar MMD47 as an example:
A) roll number of initials to both guns before any shots are made
B) roll first gun (lets say 2 initial). Shoot first, then roll second gun (lets say 3) and shoot all 4 initials left
C) roll first gun and shoot it. Roll second gun and shoot it
War Boar MMD47 has Dual Attack, so it must roll the ROF when it chooses either “Make one initial attack with each of its melee weapons.” or “Make a number of initial attacks with each of its ranged weapons equal to the weapons’ rate of fire (ROF).”
In either case, you have to roll before you start making the ranged attacks, because that’s the only option that makes any sort of sense. Your ROF is a variable value, and you can’t start making attacks by just guessing how many attacks you are allowed.
(Consider the case where a future effect says something like “models lose 1 initial ranged attack.” You have ROF d3. You stand a 33% chance to ultimately have zero attacks. Can you make an attack first and just hope you roll high for ROF? No, of course not. You have to determine the ROF before you begin.)
Here’s the exact example from the rule book that is discussed in the linked thread, as well:
You roll ROF when you declare you’re going to make ranged attacks with the weapon. Aside from the fact that the rulebook says this, it’s also the only option that makes any logical sense. The ROF has no value until the ROF is rolled and the value is supplied. You can’t make “not a number” number of attacks during your activation.
I agree that rolling ranged attacks at the beginning of a ranged/dual attack combat action makes the most sense, but I’m not sure that the rulebook supports it.
The example in your second post is the only part of the rulebook I can find directly addressing variable rates of fire, and I think the phrase “declares the warjack is going to make ranged attacks with a quad bolt-thrower” is a bit ambiguous. You definitely don’t have to declare which weapons you’re going to make ranged attacks with as part of a normal attack action, so is this adding a new step with ambiguous timing that’s specific to variable RoF weapons? Additionally, the phrase “declare the warjack is going to make a ranged attack” makes me wonder if the example is trying to reference the first step in the attack timing chart:
I don’t know anyone that plays it that you have to declare a target before rolling the number of shots, but maybe that’s right. I have primarily seen the following in my group:
Declare that you want to make the first attack w/ a variable RoF weapon
Roll shots
Choose target for the first attack and finish step 1 of the timing chart
There may be some rules text from mk3 that my play group is following bc they don’t realize it’s gone in MK4
The exact timing does end up mattering a lot of the time, as it could totally change your targeting choices. The rulebook doesn’t have any explicit text on the timing and so it would be nice to get an infernal ruling @elswickchuck
I really feel like there’s some superfluous hair-splitting happening here.
You have to pick one of the Combat Action options that allows you to make your initial ranged attacks.
The absolute latest you can roll ROF is when you declare an attack with the ranged weapon in question.
You’re in your Combat Action and you’ve committed to making ranged attacks. I genuinely cannot fathom a situation in which it actually matters if you roll ROF after saying “I’m going to make my initial melee attacks, which allows me to make my initial ranged attacks as well” and then make 3 initial melee attacks first, or whether you wait until you say “Now I am going to attack with this specific ranged weapon.”
The precise timing for rolling ROF doesn’t matter at all as long as you don’t violate a rule.
In what actual, feasible, in-game situation does the hair-trigger timing become crucial?
(And yes, everybody I’ve ever seen, including me, rolls the ROF at the start of the combat action when we pick an option that allows for initial ranged attacks.)
@mursu had the simpler example of just whether or not you should boost to hit if you’ll have leftover focus/fury. Which can happen only with one variable RoF weapon if you have to shoot another weapon first.
There are other versions of this where I want to use an aoe weapon before shooting with a variable RoF weapon and my number of shots might affect the AOE target, which comes up a lot with Orgoth.
Michael has probably missed that this topic is primarily talking about a situation where the attacking model has two guns with a variable ROF, not just one. If you know the total number of attacks your model has that turn it allows for example boost to hit some shots if you have Fury to spare.
@Aster That rationale falls apart from several angles. I’m not going to dissect this too deeply because – and don’t take this the wrong way – I have other stuff to do.
But, for starters: you’re only “deciding” you “wasted” the shots if you roll poorly and don’t kill the model.
What happens if you roll hot and blow away that heavy in 2 hits? Are your extra shots “wasted” because they didn’t help kill the heavy? You thought you were going to need 4 attacks to do the job; are you just going to give up making those shots now? That would be consistent with your hypothesis (“I won’t be able to use these attacks anywhere else because I need them for this”), but I somehow doubt you’re going to do that.
You’re putting a value judgement on the results of a random action after you’ve seen the outcome. It’s confirmation bias.
Also: I see the post I was responding to has been heavily edited while writing my reply. So some of this probably won’t make sense, but I’m not going to erase it now.
Edited to add: I legitimately can’t tell which way either of you are advocating. Absolutely everybody plays it as “roll it all at the start of your combat action” and I never said anything to the contrary. I just pointed out that the latest you can possible roll is “right before you actually make an attack.” Are you trying to convince the powers that be to make it more restrictive?
I’m just trying to make the case that it’s ambiguous and I would like an infernal ruling. I have never seen it played how you’ve described it, and you’ve never seen it played how I’ve described it. If we met at a tournament it could be awkward, and there aren’t any rules or infernal rulings to resolve the disagreement.
I honestly like your interpretation better, but there’s nothing in the rulebook I can point at to make my play group play it that way.
A model doesn’t need to make all of its attacks with one weapon before making a tax with another weapon. So you can start making attacks with one variable rate of fire weapon and then switch to a second one. When you switch to the second one, you would roll for the number of shots as soon as you declare that you are attacking with it. This was answered in the previous rules forum, but unfortunately that is gone.
Going back to the beginning of this, 3 options were given. The first (roll after choosing the correct combat action) is the least restrictive. Since the rulebook places no restricitions on when you roll ROF, just that the example says its before you shoot which is kind of assumed, we as players should not be adding our own restrictions.
If dev intent is that we are limited in some way they will say so but until then just roll at the start like we all do.
I agree, i think that generally if the exact timing of something is not specified then that means the active player gets to choose the timing. So if the exact timing of when to roll ROF is not specified, then roll it whenever you want as long at it fits the available restrictions. No need to overcomplicate things.
Still unclear what the example means, though, when it says “declares the warjack is going to make ranged attacks with a Quad Bolt Thrower.”
Do you begin combat action, choose to make ranged initials as your option (or ranged and melee if you have Dual Attack), roll ROF for all ranged weapons, and then have a span of time before actually declaring your first attack during which you can do things like “at any time” abilities, etc?
Or do you not roll a weapon’s ROF until you’ve declared an initial attack with a weapon with dX ROF?
For reference, Mk3 used the first option - an Archangel would commit to making ranged initials, roll its d3+1 ROF, and could still be forced to use its animus before making the first attack.
Likewise, the Dawnguard Trident rolled ROF for all of its guns before declaring its first ranged attack.
Your ROF is a variable value, and you can’t start making attacks by just guessing how many attacks you are allowed. 
