I thought the Meathammer was a triple-barreled shotgun that despite clip 1 requires 3 shells to reload?

But yes, fancy gear draws attention. The cleric in my party got as a present a best-quality Chain Sword.

As the primary close-combat fighter (the rest are all shooters) he of course happy as a clam.

Until he gets the first assigment to go undercover. Gold, silver and precious stones on the hilt and casing make it impossible to hide it.

I thought the Meathammer was a triple-barreled shotgun that despite clip 1 requires 3 shells to reload?

But yes, fancy gear draws attention. The cleric in my party got as a present a best-quality Chain Sword.

As the primary close-combat fighter (the rest are all shooters) he of course happy as a clam.

Until he gets the first assigment to go undercover. Gold, silver and precious stones on the hilt and casing make it impossible to hide it.

The Meathammer in Inquisitors Handbook is a 3 barrel shotgun, have a PC who carries a sawoff model

So can you share the stats for the 5 barrel one?

Oh the joys of making up a weapon and completely coincidentally calling it almost the same as one of the 40,000 established weapons

I found out I'd done the same a couple of months ago, when one of my players hit me up on Skype and asked if I was on crack because homebrew BBEG weapon X didn't match a similarly named weapon in one of the 40,000 books published for DH.

At which point I had to carefully explain to the guy - yet again - that I don't usually spend 5 hours gear hunting through the published material, when I can just stat up what I need in 10 seconds.

But lesson learned: next time I name something, Ï'm ümläütïng thë hëll öüt öf ït.

- I especially love when the "are you on crack" question is phrased as a polite inquiry that only suggests crack abuse is the only possible explanation, instead of recognising that the lives of most GMs are waaay too short to be trawling through the books for every little thing, and that ultimately the published material is of zero consequence.

EDIT:

As for a 5-barrelled Volg Meathammer, you could just up the damage to 3d5+6I and the reload to 5 shells instead of 3, and otherwise use the profile in DH04 The Inquisitor's Handbook on p.116 & 121.

Oddly I just invented my meathammer off the top of my head, seem I must have unconsiously retained the concept from the IH at some point.

Mine was essentially a handcannon variant (with the attendant bracing rules) that fired five shotgun shells at 10m range for 4d5+2 with 0 Pen.

I called it he meathammer because a) it`s comically oversized for a pistol b) I pictured the wounds looking like tenderised beef.

(Currently she also has six mangoes, but that's another story.)

Even the most dedicated servant of the God-Emperor can't survive on faith alone

I follow two very simple rules.

I don't let my players break cover to go splash big money at high-end weapon dealers on-mission.

and

If I don't want my players to have something I don't give it to a soft, squishy NPC.

If you absolutely must have a piece of awesome gear floating about you can always gene-lock it, have it get damaged in the fight to take it or make it a unique variant with power balanced by irritating drawbacks.

...

When all else fails, poor quality is your friend.

All very good advice. Number two is especially important to remember, because it can be easy to kit out your big boss with the best gear he could possibly have without realizing the consequences of giving that gear to your players.

I recently gave a force staff to a Chaos-tainted psyker for a climactic battle, and the party psyker picked it up as a shiny new weapon. The rest of the party has chainsword- or bolter-level weaponry at this point, so the staff is much stronger than everyone else's gear. To balance this out, I gave the staff a hidden drawback :it has a small chance to cause Psychic Phenomena when the psyker attacks with it. As of yet, the psyker hasn't had a chance to use the staff (his arm was blown off by a lasgun in the same battle), but he'll have quite a nasty surprise if he overuses its power...

I called it he meathammer because a) it`s comically oversized for a pistol b) I pictured the wounds looking like tenderised beef.

To be fair, the Meat Hammer is one of my favorite weapon names in the whole Inquisitor's Handbook. Use it as often as possible!

Covered in Weasels, does it cause phenomena whenever he rolls a 9 for damage?

To be fair, unless he has a Close Combat build or a high mastery level, Force weapons don't seem to OP to me.

Unless you're playing Ascension, it'll only be causing D10+6 AP6 damage. That's certainly high, but not too much higher than a chainsword. (A chainsword has less maximum damage, but due to tearing causes about equal average damage.) The chance for Instant Death is bigger, but not overwhelming.

The big weakness for a Psyker weilding it, though, is that he will almost definitely have no CC abilities. Has he taken ANY Weapon Skill advances? Crushing Blow? Swift Strike? If not, he still won't be causing much damage in Close Combat.

The real power lies in the discharge of the Psy Weapon. I mean 1-6d10 direct damage past armour and TB is insane.

Covered in Weasels, does it cause phenomena whenever he rolls a 9 for damage?

To be fair, unless he has a Close Combat build or a high mastery level, Force weapons don't seem to OP to me.

Unless you're playing Ascension, it'll only be causing D10+6 AP6 damage. That's certainly high, but not too much higher than a chainsword.

You missed the bit where, if a Psyker lands a hit with a Force weapon, he can use a free action to cast a Psychic Power with a threshold of 6-- which forces a contested willpower test that deals an extra d10 damage (that ignores Armor and Toughness), for each degree of success the Psyker wins by (Inquisitor's Handbook page 188).

To be fair, unless he has a Close Combat build or a high mastery level, Force weapons don't seem to OP to me.

Unless you're playing Ascension, it'll only be causing D10+6 AP6 damage. That's certainly high, but not too much higher than a chainsword.

You missed the bit where, if a Psyker lands a hit with a Force weapon, he can use a free action to cast a Psychic Power with a threshold of 6-- which forces a contested willpower test that deals an extra d10 damage (that ignores Armor and Toughness), for each degree of success the Psyker wins by.

With all these limitations, you're looking at the bonus damage maybe 15-20% of the time, unless he's building very melee-heavy. (It's hard to give precise numbers without knowing his stats and the enemy's.) That really doesn't seem too bad to me.

To be fair, unless he has a Close Combat build or a high mastery level, Force weapons don't seem to OP to me.

Unless you're playing Ascension, it'll only be causing D10+6 AP6 damage. That's certainly high, but not too much higher than a chainsword.

You missed the bit where, if a Psyker lands a hit with a Force weapon, he can use a free action to cast a Psychic Power with a threshold of 6-- which forces a contested willpower test that deals an extra d10 damage (that ignores Armor and Toughness), for each degree of success the Psyker wins by.

But first he has to hit, right? And considering that Psykers generally lack melee talents or good WS, you're looking at maybe a 25% chance to hit after reactions. Then he has to use his power (Which, true, is not hard but it risks Perils,) and then beat someone in a Willpower test (Which also isn't too hard since he'll likely have higher Willpower.)

With all these limitations, you're looking at the bonus damage maybe 15-20% of the time, unless he's building very melee-heavy. (It's hard to give precise numbers without knowing his stats and the enemy's.) That really doesn't seem too bad to me.

Suddenly a wild Templar Calix appears.

Even without Templar Calix, Savant Psykers get both Blademaster as well as Swift Attack, so the idea of them landing a hit in melee combat isn't that far fetched at all. At a high rank, they can have Favored by the Warp, and to roll a 6, they only need to roll one dice anyways to have a guaranteed pass on the test.

That's a 10% of Psychic Phenomena happening, and even if that happens, it's a 12.5% chance of Perils of the Warp if that's been rolled. That's a 1.2% chance of a high rank Psyker actually getting screwed by the Force Sword.

On actually hitting, we'll assume a Psyker with a Weapon Skill of 35. Swift Attack means he can make two attacks a round, and Blademaster allows him to reroll one miss as long as it's with a bladed weapon (Force Sword, we'll assume). Now, statistics aren't my strong point, but this BASICALLY gives even a non-Templar Calix Psyker a 63.7% chance of landing a hit per round, with a Weapon Skill of only 35. Not too shabby at all.

And yeah, if it's a Templar Calix, weapon skill is no problem at all.

Only way Force weapons conform to a relatively weak weapon in a Psyker's hand is if it's a Scholar branch Psyker and even THEN, there's a few Psychic Powers that would make landing that hit a lot easier.

^This. The Templar Calix is tearing my run of Damned Cities apart one sword strike at a time. That's without me letting him do that extra channel of damage through his force sword because even he thought it was too much.

Covered in Weasels, does it cause phenomena whenever he rolls a 9 for damage?

To be fair, unless he has a Close Combat build or a high mastery level, Force weapons don't seem to OP to me.

Unless you're playing Ascension, it'll only be causing D10+6 AP6 damage. That's certainly high, but not too much higher than a chainsword.

You missed the bit where, if a Psyker lands a hit with a Force weapon, he can use a free action to cast a Psychic Power with a threshold of 6-- which forces a contested willpower test that deals an extra d10 damage (that ignores Armor and Toughness), for each degree of success the Psyker wins by (Inquisitor's Handbook page 188).

We're playing using the DH2 Beta rules, so psychic powers work a little differently. You make a WP test to manifest powers, and you cause psychic phenomena if you roll doubles. This particular force weapon causes Perils on any roll of doubles made to attack with the weapon. Force weapons still function the same way.

The bonus damage is definitely the strongest aspect of Force Weapons, and even a psyker with limited close combat skills has a decent chance of hitting his target. The party psyker has 42 WS (very good starting roll on 2d10+25) and force weapons count as Best Quality so there's an additional +10 to hit. That gives the psyker a target number of 52, not bad at all for someone with no close-combat talents.