I get your point Heritage from a background point of view and it might feel like not much of a difference but the weapons are truely vicious. They had to come out with a complete set of optional errata'd stats for the ranged and melee weapons of astrates. It really doesn't look quite that great comparing between the melee weapons particularly I agree but they have to take into account that unnatural strength plus the +2 damage from running around in power armour as the difference in damage between astrates and mortal characters is fairly hefty.<br/><br/>But as for the heavy bolters I was talking about it's actually 1d10+8x and those are the mortal ones! The dark heresy heavy bolters are just a little inconsistent in their damage.