The bolter, also called a boltgun, and its variants are some of the most powerful
hand-held ballistic anti-personnel weaponry in use by the military forces of the
Imperium of Man. It is a powerful assault weapon that fires explosive kinetic rounds
colloquially referred to as bolts. The weapon is fearsome, with explosive rounds capable of
ripping through or blowing apart a foe.
The bolter is a weapon strongly associated with the Adeptus Astartes, and rightly so.
However while the genetically engineered and power armor wearing Space Marines typically wield
scaled up versions of the bolter such as the famed Godwyn Pattern, merely human servants of the Imperium
lack the strength to wield such powerful weapons and instead use variants such
as the Godwyn-Da'ez, Phobos, Tallarn, Umbra, or Locke Patterns which are sized appropriately
for an unaugmented human to use.
Rapid Fire (1): When firing with a Rapid Fire weapon, a successful hit
roll scores a number of hits equal to the number of bullet
holes on the Firepower dice.
If a Rapid Fire weapon scores more than one hit, the hits
can be split between multiple targets. The first must be
allocated to the initial target, but the remainder can be
allocated to other fighters within 3" of the first who are
also within range and line of sight. These must not be any
harder to hit than the original target...for example if a target in the
open is hit, an obscured target cannot have hits allocated
to it. Allocate all of the hits before making any wound
rolls.
Rapid Fire also works in close combat when on a weapon that also has the Pistol trait.