Hello comrades. Long time lover of Inquisitor, but I haven't played (or visited this forum) for years. I have managed to convert my DnD friends to lovers of 40k with a 2 year Dark Heresy campaign, so now time to bust out my favorite game on them. But I am very rusty and rather unfamiliar with current community conventions to update the rules. Thus, I have a simple question regarding the Strength requirement for the 'heavy' melee weapons (falchions, great axes and eviscerators). The S 75 requirement seems arbitrary and archaic and means that only a body builder could use one of these weapons effectively. It seems silly that a regular person will do less damage with a massive sword, even if they have difficulty using it. As the GM I have the right to just throw the rule out, of course, but I was wondering if experienced GMs have addressed this issue in a sensible way. Thanks for the time, and good gaming.
Given what has become the Conclave Standard, I might drop the Strength requirement to 65 or even 60; that's still a strong character, but much more sensible given the tendency towards slightly lower-powered characters. Alternatively, just lose the half-Damage thing, as that is just barmy. (So is calling a two-handed sword a "falchion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falchion)", but that's been done to death already.)
Do remember that the rules were written for an era where ridiculously high stats were the norm.
S75 is phenomenally high, and was even getting that way in the original game.
Only one of the sample characters in the rulebook could have wielded it without penalty, and that was Artemis (while Gruss and Damien did have strengths of over 75, Gruss only had one hand and Damien had none).
In truth, many longswords could be wielded one handed, but even those that did need two hands weren't that cumbersome.
The version I'm playing around with at the moment is:
"If a character with a Strength of less than X wields a Great weapon, they get no strength bonus, and their hit/parry attempts are at an additional penalty equal to each point their strength is under the required value."
X can vary, dependent on the exact weapon. A typical Great weapon might be only Great (60), a bigger one might be Great (70), and a huge weapon intended for Space Marines might be Great (100) or so.
Obviously, a higher "Great" value also brings with it a higher base damage, although that's not formalised.
Yeah ST 75 is pretty bleeping high. Most swords were less than 5 pounds if I recall my history corectly. I can't imagion a Falcion being heavyer than ten pounds. So I would drop the ST requirement to 60 or 65.