Lightsabers

[Wifstrand]

So, I'm new in the game. In fact, I'm building my very first Inquisitor. I'm basing him off of Eisenhorn but will try to change him up as much as possible. I wanted to give him a sword so cut off Eisenhorn's staff then wondered what type of sword he should have. I have some brass rod lying around and thought that a rapier would be nice. Then I realized that the handle of Eisenhorn's staff lends itself much more to a lightsaber!

How would one go about doing rules for a lightsaber? I supposed a power sword minus any Bleeding effects would do the trick, to represent the instant cauterizing by the thousands of degrees hot blade.

Whaddoya think, is it stupid?

[DapperAnarchist]

One of Kaled's TechPriest characters has a "lightsaber" like weapon - a Sollex Energy Blade, I believe, from the Dark Heresy rules (though obviously adapted for Inquisitor). However, the Star Wars lightsaber usually is thought of as a bit... easy for Inquisitor. Its clean, efficient, and seems to have no negative side effects - not really 40K.

[MarcoSkoll]

No direct imports of lightsabers, please. Dan Abnett more or less wrote Eisenhorn one, and I couldn't see why - or in fact, where the precedent was. (We know that Imperial portable plasma technology is pretty unsafe, but this seemed free of such drawbacks)

As DapperAnarchist says, they're clean, efficient, innately concealable and exceptionally dangerous, but with no downsides. A "regular" power sword is a very powerful weapon, so making something even better is really a bit OTT.

But the Sollex-Aegis blade is more characterful, with a number of downsides that counter its horrific damage and ability to destroy even power weapons. Kaled wrote some rules a while back - although he did change the effects of a 96-00 fail slightly and I think he was considering reducing it to four turns of fuel (because it was very powerful.)

Myself, I found it a good excuse for messing around in Photoshop.

[Morcus]

What they said.

I'm sure there were some Ctan weapons in the old fluff that were esentially lightsabres but my memory is hazy.

[DapperAnarchist]

Ah, the Phase Sword and Phase Knife - much more interesting, wickedly powerful. Instead of being made of energy, the Phase weapons are made of a mysterious alien metal (Necrodermis, it seems) that can phase in and out of this universe, allowing it to entirely ignore armour...

However, I would argue that a C'Tan weapon should be treated similarly to a Daemonweapon, in that it is far more than just a weapon, and is in fact a fragment of a god.

[Kaled]

Marco has already summarised the Sollex-Aegis Energy Blade quite well - the only think I can think to add is that having used it in a load of games, I don't really like it - it's just so powerful it's not really fun to use.  It's so likely to put anyone it hits out of action that the limited fuel is not a big downside, and given that you don't need to make many to hit rolls the chances of an auto-fail are low.

It's a shame, because the character I put it on was one of my favourites...

[MarcoSkoll]

I don't really like it - it's just so powerful it's not really fun to use.

Have you considered reducing it to a Reach 2 weapon? I find that reach is quite a major decider in a weapon's formidability, as each point shifts both your and your opponent's hit rolls by 10% (along with your parry, although not dodge, rolls).

It'd also be a pretty minor conversion with the way you've modelled it. Iif you felt you had to change it at all, that is  - the "Yeah, it looks Reach 3, but I've made it Reach 2 as it represents it being hard to wield effectively" excuse would work. One would imagine that you would wield such a potentially hazardous weapon with a degree more caution.

[Ynek]

We know that Imperial portable plasma technology is pretty unsafe)

As I recall, a power sword doesn't use plasma technology, it is merely a normal, unremarkable blade, which is surrounded by a powerful matter-disruption field which weakens the bonds between the interparticle bonds in the object it strikes. In effect, it's a disruption weapon rather than a plasma weapon.

The idea behind Eisenhorn's 'lightsaber' was that it was merely a disruption field emitter with no actual, tangible 'blade' inside it. However, I will admit that the weapon was a bit of a transparent import from Star Wars, and it would probably have been more characterful if Eisenhorn had something a bit more original as a weapon.

I'll also throw my (meagre) weight behind the idea that Kaled's energy blade is a far more characterful choice of weapon.

[MarcoSkoll]

As I recall, a power sword doesn't use plasma technology

Nope, but a lightsaber does. Eisenhorn talks about "a fusion cell that generates a metre long blade of coherent light". However, pretty much every description of a disruption field is that of wildly crackling lightning.
To me, that implies that it's a raw rip of a lightsaber, and works on plasma tech rather than disruption tech.

[GAZKUL]

i guess you could do one as a primitive mockery of perhaps a rumoured STC weapon. just as the imperial gauss weapons are vastly inferior to the necron version a bastardised version of a lightsabre could be used. perhaps an ugly, unreliable and unsubtle peice of machinery, lots of whizzing gears near the generator and a centeral steel rod to give the field something to hold onto.

[Macabre]

Technically, all a lightsaber is, is a laser sword, and seeing as laser technology is the most reliable and robust form of weaponry in the 41st millennium, so as long as an STC is available, the Imperium could probably mass produce such a weapon with ease. However the particulars would require a generator chamber (probably held in the hilt and grip), a telescopic focusing, 'T' shaped array to ensure a keen edge of limited width (probably a lot like a thinner riot baton used by the police), and some form of refracting node for the top to ensure a limited length and to reflect the beam back on itself in a continuous loop, resulting in a double edged squared off blade of laser energy. However, owing to the fact that laser damage is actually due to a direct (but reasonably slow) heat induction on contact, it'll probably do less damage than their Jedi counterparts, to this end I would suggest using standard sword rules and apply both the 'gnawing' and 'warpflame' daemonic attributes.

[Ynek]

Weren't there rules for a lightsabre-esque weapon in the Salvar Chem-dog's old rules? If you rolled a 5 for your archaeotech, it produced a "coherent beam of searing light" which counted as a power sword.

Meh, it's a bit of a stretch. Did the Salvar Chem Dogs rules predate the Eisenhorn trilogy, or was it the other way around?

[InquisitorHeidfeld]

First things first...

Inquisitor =/= Star Wars

(I'm considering putting that in a bigger font for optimal dispersion of vexation...)


With regard to Lightsabres themselves, they are neither laser swords nor plasma weapons, they are based on "arc wave" technology and the reason they're a Jedi weapon is that producing sufficient power to create the 'blade' and aligning the rough, uncut crystals used is impossible without Force manipulation.
In other words the Lightsabre is a Deus Ex Machina - it evokes the Katana's role in the Samurai movies but there is almost no explanation as to how or why... because there doesn't need to be, it's Star Wars.

Power Weapons use a Power Field to provide the damaging surface - which is why they're unbreakable, any actual blade underneath is purely asthetic (or potentially to provide surfaces by which the sheath can hold the sword when the power fields are not active).
How power fields work in this context is also unexplained but from the old fiction I infer that they have the peculiar property of either transfering zero reaction force or potentially transferring it at 180° to the normal direction. By aligning a pair of such fields to form a cutting edge the greater the force attempting to push the two together the greater the force they would exert in response.

[GAZKUL]

Salvar Chem Dogs rules

they had rules? could you send a link?

[MarcoSkoll]

they had rules? could you send a link?

Old 40k rules. Not Inquisitor.