[Alyster Wick]

I've floated versions of this idea out there before, but now I want to finalize something. My idea is to redo the more iconic Close Combat Weapons in the 40K universe to make them a bit more fun (the damage dice variation are just incredibly boring). As has been done before, I think it makes sense to look at these specialty weapons as mods of basic weapons types as opposed to brand new weapons all together.

BIG shout out to Koval, whose RIPPA rules I use here for Tearing and Rending damage.

The weapon types I'm looking to tackle would be:

Chain Weapons
Shock Weapons
Monomolecular Weapons
Power Weapons

Am I missing any major ones? Force Weapons I suppose, I just don't know that I have any ideas that far off from what the rulebook has. Anyway, here is my ideas.

Chain Weapons
Add an additional damage dice (a sword goes from 2d6 to 3d6)
Add 10 to the parry penalty (it's much bulkier now, after all)
The weapon does tearing damage (roll and extra dice, discard the lowest. So for a chainsword you role 4d6 and remove the lowest die)
Characters defending against the chain weapon add 10 to their parry penalty
An activated chain weapon can be heard 35 meters away

Shock Weapons
These weapons cannot be destroyed by power weapons
A shock weapon adds d6 (average) or d10 (riot grade) to its damage (based on the quality of the weapon)
Characters hit by a shock weapon must pass a T test or be stunned for d3 turns
(not a huge change from what's currently there, I know, but I'm doing this for the sake of folks being able to create their own weapons!)

Monomolecular Blades
Can only be taken by bladed weapons
Add between +2 (human craftsman) and +6 (eldar quality, literally one molecule across) damage to the blade, based on quality
Characters hit by a monomolecular blade must pass a T test or start bleeding from that location

Power Weapons
This is my rawest category. Here are my three ideas:
Add d10 (basic), 2d6 (military), or 2d10 (master crafted) damage based on the quality of the power weapon
Weapon does d3 Rending damage (-1 to your targets BIV for each grade of rending)
Divide opponents armor by d3+1, rounding up (that way power armor is reduced anywhere from 5 armor to 3. Anything else is paper)
Side note, I really love the idea of just doing d3 Rending Damage and the d3+1 mod to armor. That said, two extra dice rolls seem excessive, though I suppose hitting someone with a power weapon should be an event. I like the rending damage a lot because it drives home the weird effect that an energy field would have on living flesh. That said, the armor mitigation is important, as that's the whole point of a power weapon to begin with. I don't know, thoughts?

Once I hammer out these ideas I'd love to jump into specialty types of each weapon, like Eviscerators, Thunder Hammers, Neural Whips, Agonizers, etc. Also, I have some thought son encumbrance, but I honestly don't play by those rules (we just have more of a good-will rule of thumb not to take obscene amounts of equipment).

[Lord Borak]

With chain weapons, the average damage of 3d6 and 2d10 work out about the same so there seems little point adding even more dice to complicate matters. The rending idea is cool though but I think this might ne better causing more damage to flesh and blood. Maybe add d6 to an injury total and then bleeding on top?  You could make the long term effects of injury from chain weapons more severe as well.

Off to work now so I'll comment on the others later
 

[Koval]

rules ... for Tearing and Rending damage.

I think you meant Marco and RIA. While recognition of my own work is nice, misattributing someone else's work is just a headache.

On a more constructive note, I believe Marco wanted to make power weapons something like Heavy AP (so just straight up halving armour), as well as granting Critical Hits if the units die is equal to or below a certain value (which IIRC was disgustingly high; 6 or 7 for smaller things like swords, up to 9 for a massive power-scythe one of my characters has) but without really changing the damage stat of the weapon too much. Maybe like one or two points extra. It's a lot simpler than rolling loads of extra dice.

[Cortez]

I don't really see the need for this at the moment. Close combat can be quite nasty, but unless the attacker gets several actions off the defender is usually able to avoid the first attack, so to me it seems to add an additional layer of complexity (more dice rolling, special rules etc.) without really improving things, although I do like Borak's idea of chain weapons automatically causing bleeding.

I'll use the power sword as an example of what I mean: The current power sword does 3D10 damage which means a minimum damage of 3, an average damage (if my maths is correct) of 17 and a maximum damage of 30. With your changes the sword will do 4D6 damage, so a minimum of 4, average 15, maximum 24, but will also do 1-3 rending damage and ignore 2-4 points of armour, which actually means (against an armoured target) you'll have a minimum damage of 7, average of 20 and maximum of 31, yet requires an additional two dice rolls to achieve.

[Van Helser]

I've had some thoughts on things:

Making power weapons halve armour values like Kraken Penetrator Rounds may be something to apply, but they already do a massive amount of damage anyhow and would become even more powerful with some of these proposed changes. I tend to actively discourage their use in games due the ability to one-hit PCs anyhow. Adding a little change to damage to represent crude/military/master-crafted is a cosmetic change that won't slow things down too much.

Chain weapons should be noisy - if Saussure is reading he could wax lyrical about a character trying a sneak attack with an Eviscerator under his watch - and rending isn't too bad an idea. Might be simpler to add +3 or something to damage and save on a re-roll.

Shock weapons stunning for longer is something I could get with.

Monoblades doing more damage makes sense, and allows for a distinction between primitive and military weapons. Do we go full Dark Heresy and allow non-primitive armour (robes, leather, furs, hide) to count double against primitive weapons?

Ruaridh

[Alyster Wick]

Ah, hit I nerve it seems. I'll respond to a few things and offer some amendments.

rules ... for Tearing and Rending damage.

I think you meant Marco and RIA. While recognition of my own work is nice, misattributing someone else's work is just a headache.

I looked back and you do indeed attribute the damage types to the Revised Armory. My bad, and thanks Marco in that case!


So a bulk of the criticism tends to be along the lines of, "this isn't necessary" and "math-hammer shows there's little practical difference." These are both valid points and there isn't much point arguing against them as there isn't really a right or a wrong, just a different point of view. To that end, let me explain what I was going for.

"This isn't necessary" - True, there's nothing particularly wrong with the current rulebook versions as they stand. That said, Chainswords and Power Weapons are iconic pieces of kit and in a game as in-depth as inquisitor it feels wrong to me not to have them differentiated a bit. My attempt here was to do that in a (relatively) simple way. I do have some edits below which I think will push us more to that end.

"Math-Hammer!" - Also very true, my math here doesn't necessarily lead to all that much differentiation statistically speaking, but I would argue that it is significant. Having these options available as upgrades sets them apart from what is already in the rulebook. That effectively puts the current damage values represented by Power Weapons and Chain Weapons back in play for other mundane weapon types (which, in turn, could be upgraded). Now I'm not arguing that people show rush to create spear-swords that do obscene damage just to upgrade them to chain-spear swords, but in a world of limited dice combinations it's helpful to set certain categories of weapons aside as upgrade to allow for more options. My attempt with these rules was to clear the field for all varieties of mundane weapons and reserve the four types above as upgrades to the mundane types. That was too wordy, but does that make sense?

Back to the original point of it not being necessary, again I do agree that it isn't necessary. But I do think it's fun and offers up more possibilities.

My last push back to Math-Hammer is that it's just fun to roll more dice. When you attack someone with a chainsword or a power sword these rules make you feel the effect of them being more powerful in a literal way. You take the dice you would have rolled for a mundane variety of said weapon and increase them. This is purely psychological, but I would argue it's significant. After all, we could just play inquisitor with chess pieces on a strip of cardboard and entered numbers into Excel rather than rolling dice and rules-wise it'd be the same game. That's perhaps an extreme and unfair comparison by degrees, but you see my point.


On to the actual revisions

Chain Weapons
Weapons characteristic Changes: Add an additional damage dice (a sword goes from 2d6 to 3d6); Add 10 to the parry penalty (it's much bulkier now, after all)
Weapons Rules Changes:
The weapon does rending 1 damage
Characters defending against the chain weapon add 10 to their parry penalty
An activated chain weapon can be heard 35 meters away
If a Chain Weapon is "destroyed" by a power weapon it may be used as an Improvised Weapon
Opponents hit by a chain weapons must pass a T test or start bleeding

Mostly I changed formatting (looking at characteristic changes and rules changes separately). I did add the bleeding suggestions. An earlier draft of these rules actually did have bleeding in there, but I didn't want to use it for both chain weapons and monomolecular blades. I like the idea of damage from chain weapons being difficult to recover from, but what makes sense? Perhaps you can tick damage off your Injury total as normal but cannot decrease the injury level on a Location? If that's the case I may lose the bleeding rule as chain weapons would be quite monstrous.

Power Weapons
Weapon Characteristic Change:
None
Weapon Rules Change:
Weapon does Tearing Damage
Weapon does Heavy AP Damage (halves armor value)
If a Power Weapon is Parried or Successfully Parries there is a 20%-75% chance (based on quality of the weapon) that the opposing weapon is destroyed.

So I totally negated my own point about rolling more dice being the fun part (I also remembered to add back in the part about power weapons being able to destroy other weapons). That said, I think this effectively represents what a power field would do. The weapon damage remains unchanged, but the combo of Heavy AP and Tearing make it much more likely that a power weapon will have an impressive showing against an enemy regardless of what armor they're wearing. I will say that the term "Tearing" does not seem appropriate, but the rules effect work as intended. This also effectively differentiates power weapons completely from Shock Weapons (what with the dice bonus they get). Lastly, I think the variation in "chance of destroying other weapons" is important. It makes it less crazy for a ganger-lord who has gotten his hand on a really old and poorly maintained power weapon if there's only a 25% chance it destroys the weapon it's parrying against (still a 1 in 5 shot, but better than 3 in 4). Actually, now that I think about it power weapons could do Light or Heavy AP based on quality too.

What do folks think? While I know I gave some pushback on the pushback I was given I think the revised power weapon rules actually acknowledge those points and adjust accordingly.

Finally, thank you to everyone for the feedback! It was all useful. Thanks for reminding me of the AP damage Van.

[Cortez]

So ignoring the necessity of the change or not 

The chain weapon change is ok with it doing rending (+D6 damage) instead of tearing damage (your previous version effectively did both) and causing bleeding, which will give it a distinct flavour over regular weapons and an appropriate amount of damage. Although I would suggest making it a straight 50% chance to cause bleeding rather than a toughness test.

The power weapon though doesn't really feel like a power weapon to me. The re-roll via tearing will make the damage more consistent but the maximum damage dealt will be quite low especially compared to chain weapons (note in 2nd ed 40k Chainswords had strength 4, while powerswords had strength 5) or force weapons (2D6+2, +D10/2D6 on WP check). Powerswords for me should be a rare but powerful weapon that should cause catastrophic damage especially against unarmoured targets.

[MarcoSkoll]

I think you meant Marco and RIA.

Well, being honest, Tearing is just nicked from Dark Heresy (other than tweaking it so it can use several dice).

The thing about power weapons being regular weapons with Heavy AP and a very high Critical chance is itself more or less borrowed from Robey's INQ2. I like it as an idea, as it's simple and makes power weapons pretty formidable, but avoids critical hits on top of a huge damage roll - while hits for 40+ damage are dramatic, they're not necessarily easy to balance a damage system around.

~~~~~

I'm not yet necessarily sure what I'm doing with the damage system in the Revised edition, but I'm definitely considering rebalancing system shock (at the moment, as both the SS value and the chance of passing the test are based the character's T, it means that characters go from being highly vulnerable to nigh-immune over a relatively narrow range of T), and that'll likely include adjustments so that high damage hits are more likely to cause SS (either negative modifiers, or requiring more than one test).

To take Silva as an example, with her T 73, she currently needs to take 15 damage for SS test (which many weapons can't even manage, even assuming they don't hit an armoured location), but once she needs to take one, she has a 73% chance of staying conscious right up until that hit does the 38 damage needed to exceed her consciousness.

I'd like to see that changed a bit so that dramatic one-hit KOs can be caused by something other than "I HAVE DONE ALL OF THE DAMAGE".

~~~~~

Beyond that, the version of chain weapons I had added some Tearing and slightly increased critical chance, so chain weapons actually had a bit of an edge over power weapons from time to time (having a higher average base damage, when they did crit, they'd usually be nastier).
I had considered bleeding... but given one of the goals of the IRE is to streamline things, I'm not sure whether I want to add that bookkeeping.

I hadn't yet approached shock weapons much (although I'm really not sure about the idea of increasing their stun duration... being stunned for a single turn can be pretty crucial in close combat as it is!).

Characters hit by a monomolecular blade must pass a T test or start bleeding from that location

Funnily enough, we do know how monomolecular cuts work*. They cut really well, but bleed less and heal better.

* As I mentioned in another thread recently, obsidian blades are REALLY sharp, with edges down to about 3nm. (For reference, a single silicon atom is about .2nm, a single walled carbon nanotube molecule is about 1.3nm, the membrane of a human cell is about 10 nm thick and the edge of a good steel blade will be of the order of 1000 nm).
In flesh, they make such precise cuts that the surrounding cells don't get damaged - that means little (or no) pain, and means the body only needs to knit a few cells together to heal the whole thing.

I will say that the term "Tearing" does not seem appropriate, but the rules effect work as intended.

The way I normally decide whether something counts as Tearing or Rending is that Tearing weapons rely on brute force, Rending weapons have more finesse - they cut or pierce the tissue. (I know "rending" as a term still implies violence, but can more reasonably include "cut" as a definition than "tearing" can). There are a few exceptions here and there, but the naming is intended as a bit of a guide.

[Alyster Wick]

The chain weapon change is ok with it doing rending (+D6 damage) instead of tearing damage (your previous version effectively did both) and causing bleeding, which will give it a distinct flavour over regular weapons and an appropriate amount of damage. Although I would suggest making it a straight 50% chance to cause bleeding rather than a toughness test.

The 50% chance makes sense, consider that implemented. I am finding myself flip-flopping on Rending vs. Tearing though, I may switch that back.

Shock weapons stunning for longer is something I could get with.

I hadn't yet approached shock weapons much (although I'm really not sure about the idea of increasing their stun duration... being stunned for a single turn can be pretty crucial in close combat as it is!).

This was actually totally accidental on my part. I thought the current rule was d3 for some reason, though this may be a happy accident. I'm planning to playtest these rules (well, whatever the finalized version of them looks like) as soon as possible so I may try that and see how it goes. Perhaps critical hits will stun d3 (or d3+1?) on a fail? Maybe that happens in lieu of double damage? (to symbolize that this is a weapon meant to disable rather than kill). As an aside, what do folks think about the "stun" damage only effecting the injury total (and not counting against BIV)? The thinking (again) would be that the stun field isn't actually damaging the limb but rather is attempting to overload the system. I think it's a fun twist. Too many rules to remember?

Do we go full Dark Heresy and allow non-primitive armour (robes, leather, furs, hide) to count double against primitive weapons?

Ruaridh

That may be a little too rich, even for my blood.

Characters hit by a monomolecular blade must pass a T test or start bleeding from that location

Funnily enough, we do know how monomolecular cuts work*. They cut really well, but bleed less and heal better.

* As I mentioned in another thread recently, obsidian blades are REALLY sharp, with edges down to about 3nm. (For reference, a single silicon atom is about .2nm, a single walled carbon nanotube molecule is about 1.3nm, the membrane of a human cell is about 10 nm thick and the edge of a good steel blade will be of the order of 1000 nm).
In flesh, they make such precise cuts that the surrounding cells don't get damaged - that means little (or no) pain, and means the body only needs to knit a few cells together to heal the whole thing.

Hmm, actually Rending may make more sense monomolecular blades. What would folks think about Rending (1) and rather than using Strength to calculate the damage bonus you use WS? The thinking would be that how hard you swing the blade is much less important that how you twist it once it goes in. I like all of this other than the fact that it doesn't deal with the idea that a monomolecular blade should slice through armor more easily (though I suppose you could say the WS bonus solves this, as you need to be skilled to put the blade through the right parts of the armor).



Which brings me back to power weapons. Heavy AP, Tearing, and possible Rending (1, 2, or d3?) could work. It solves the armor problem and rather than increase the damage it weakens the enemy defenses while making it more likely the damage will be on the high end of the spectrum. However, it feels really lazy to just throw all of Marco's rules at Power Weapons just to make them more effective.

I'm really in a quandary here. I know I could just leave well-enough alone and go with the rulebook versions, but I feel like there' s a good combination of rules out there. I could drop Tearing and make Criticals more likely (as has been suggested), maybe half of the required WS? Would that be too powerful, or just the right spot? So Heavy AP, Crits on 50% of required WS test, and Rending (variable based on quality), plus a variable chance it destroys the defending weapon (based on quality)? Still feels clunky to me...

[Lord Borak]

With Power weapons. Why not just have them ignore, say, 5pts of armour? That way Carapace offers next to no protection whilst Power armour still offers some protection. The problem with 'halving' armour is that some armour becomes almost as good a protection as others. Flak armour (AV3) would go to AV2 which is only 1pt less that Carapace armour. Power armour would only give slightly better protection compared to Carapace and so on. A flat 'ignore' seems a bit fairer to the different armour types.

You could even have it that the better quality the Power weapon the more armour it ignores.


As for chock weapons. You could do it that it 'numbs' what ever it hits so if it hits an arm then they need a str test or drop the weapon. If they get hit in the head then they get stunned for additional rounds. If they get hit in the leg another str test of fall prone. A bit too much to remember though.

[Alyster Wick]

With Power weapons. Why not just have them ignore, say, 5pts of armour? That way Carapace offers next to no protection whilst Power armour still offers some protection. The problem with 'halving' armour is that some armour becomes almost as good a protection as others. Flak armour (AV3) would go to AV2 which is only 1pt less that Carapace armour. Power armour would only give slightly better protection compared to Carapace and so on. A flat 'ignore' seems a bit fairer to the different armour types.

You could even have it that the better quality the Power weapon the more armour it ignores.

Ignoring 5 points of armor seems appropriate, with variable levels for quality (say, 3 for crude and up to 7 for Master Crafted). I'm really wrestling with how to deal with the damage issue though. Perhaps just sticking w/ the damage levels in the rule book works. I'm also toying around with the thought of altering BIV in a more radical way (halving it, for instance). I'll settle on something then playtest it and see how it turns out.

As for chock weapons. You could do it that it 'numbs' what ever it hits so if it hits an arm then they need a str test or drop the weapon. If they get hit in the head then they get stunned for additional rounds. If they get hit in the leg another str test of fall prone. A bit too much to remember though.

What about just two basic effects? Characters hit in the legs or arms treat that limb as crippled for d3 turns on a failed T test (this does not stack, once the limbs is stunned it can't be restunned until the feeling comes back). Characters hit anywhere else are stunned, as per the rule book. If characters are hit in the head then the stunning is just compounded (the stunned results for being hit in the head being cumulative w/ shock weapon). It's a little different but also not crazily overpowered, plus it's pretty intuitive. It could get really hairy if someone gets hit in multiple different limbs in the same turn, but the odds of being hit in different limbs and failing those T tests seems remote enough that it'd be fun rather than overpowered.

I'm actually pretty happy with that idea. I think it modifies the effect of shock weapons in a way that makes them more fun (getting stunned is a royal pain as it is). 

[Lord Borak]

All those changes sound cool but I'm just wary of over complicating rules. If you're spending 5 minutes working out a weapons effects on a model you're bogging the game down far too much. God helps us, we don't want to play second Ed 40K again.

Halving BIV is pretty horrific. Power Weapons are almost one hit wonders anyway. If you go for halving someone's BIV then I'd look and decreasing their overall damage whilst your at it. Say a Power sword is Dam: 2D10, ignores 5pts of armour and halves someone's BIV. Anyone who isn't a Marine is going to lose that limb. An average guardsman (BIV5) would take 4 levels on an average roll from a single hit.

[Alyster Wick]

All those changes sound cool but I'm just wary of over complicating rules. If you're spending 5 minutes working out a weapons effects on a model you're bogging the game down far too much. God helps us, we don't want to play second Ed 40K again. 

That's definitely a concern, but I'm also definitely committed to play testing the limb-numbing rule. If there were any effects differences beyond limb vs rest of the body (say, different effects for groin or ab hits) I think we'd be edging into overcomplication territory (and possibly new tables, which I definitely DO NOT want). I'll report back!

An average guardsman (BIV5) would take 4 levels on an average roll from a single hit.

A BIV 5 guardsmen would go to 3 (rounding up from 2.5). An "average" hit of 7 would then deal 3 levels of damage. That is definitely horrific, but comparing it to an "average" damage of 14.5 (off of 3d10, which I believe is a power sword now, correct me if I'm wrong) shows it's more or less the same (14 damage being only two levels with 15 pushing it to three, though you could comfortably say it'd average out to 2 assuming there's any level of armor).

The highest damage possibility for both of those scenarios (12 damage against 5 BIV w/ no armor vs. 30 damage against BIV 5 and 3-5 armor let's say) both result in the limb being destroyed, whereas the lowest damage would have my version still doing a level of damage (no armor being present) and wouldn't scratch the guardsmen (a disappointing result for a hit w/ a power weapon).

I'm thinking in this situation that the damage going to the Injury total remains flat (it would not be adjusted up to account for the base BIV) so a roll of 5 on the d6 would result in 5 damage to the injury total (as opposed to adjusting up the first three points to 5 to account for the actual base injury, does that make sense?). The thinking would be that whatever weird effects the power weapon has also cauterizes the wound somehow.

[Lord Borak]

Are you counting a Power sword as a normal sword with those bonuses then? The average of 2D6 is 7 (a normal sword). Changing Power weapons this way completely is quite a cool idea though. They cause the same 'damage' as a normal weapon of their type but they ignore armour and halve a persons BIV.

That works. Its nasty but not overly so as someone's base injury isn't going to go through the roof in one hit fast but their levels will.

[Alyster Wick]

Are you counting a Power sword as a normal sword with those bonuses then? The average of 2D6 is 7 (a normal sword). Changing Power weapons this way completely is quite a cool idea though. They cause the same 'damage' as a normal weapon of their type but they ignore armour and halve a persons BIV.

That works. Its nasty but not overly so as someone's base injury isn't going to go through the roof in one hit fast but their levels will.

Yes, sorry, the way I was presenting these rules was that you attached them to existing mundane weapons, NOT the current rulebook versions (which would be excessive, you're absolutely right). My next step will be to write out the actual rules so you all have something concrete to look at. In the next month I'm thinking of doing a one-off game where everyone "wakes up in the arena" and has to scramble for various weapons as a way to test them out.

Yes, it's a bit silly to think that a powersword would be sitting in an underhive gladiatorial pit, but that's not really the point