So if someone is teleporting either by using a psychic power such as 'Ere we go or by using a personal teleporter like the Teleportation Pack (Page 140 Into the Storm) what happens to their momentum?

Can someone leap a chasm, fail to make the jump and teleport to the other side mid way into falling to their doom? Do they land with the force that they had built up fall or are they stationary the moment they teleport?

If momentum does come translate does that mean you can 'charge' into combat with that momentum?

Oh **** it, forum ate my post. Okay, so it depends on the form of teleportation you're using. There are two basic ideas of how it could work; wormholes and matter-energy conversion. The most common form of teleportation in 40k is ripping a hole in the warp, hurling yourself through it, and hoping for the best. Thus, wormholes.

You're actually moving through the Warp to get to your new location, so momentum should be preserved. Second law of motion states that things that are moving want to stay moving. But since physical laws don't actually work properly in the Warp, it's a bit of a crapshoot as to whether your momentum will carry through. Given that if you're on a planet you're already moving at x,000 m/s in orbit around the sun and this would leave you reduced to a fine paste if that momentum carried through to, say, your teleportarium chamber, I'd lean towards momentum typically being left behind and/or used in the teleportation effect.

Your other kind of teleportation is the Star Trek style scan, disassemble, reassemble. The transporter beam adds energy to the closed loop of your momentum, converts all your bits into quantum energy and then reassembles that energy into matter elsewhere. In effect this separates you from the closed loop of your momentum, which at most would be used to provide additional power to the transporter beam. I don't know of any canon uses of this though, aside from Necrons. They don't spend a lot of time hanging out with the laws of physics though.

tl;dr Maybe, unless you're a Necron.

In the majority of the fluff, at least the stuff I've run across, people seem to come out of teleportation "stationary" in regards to the frame of reference of what they're ending up on. As the above person noted, your basicly being jaunted through an area where the laws of physics run and cry in the corner, so it being 'logical' may not be the best approach. Also less splatting that way.

Whatever allows for less rules-abuse.

Teleportariums in fluff require you to stand on the teleport pad stationary while teleported - it's only the xenos and psychic mcguffins that allows for mobile teleporting.

I mean bear in mind that a turn is a couple of seconds, so if you're willing to try using a rather dangerous teleportation system without standing still and letting it calibrate properly then fine, go ahead

Don't read Ringworld before playing 40k. It will give you headaches and stomach cramps. Try scotch instead.

The vast majority of the teleportation in 40k involves ripping a hole in the material universe, hurling yourself through the Warp, and then landing (hopefully) safely back in the Materium.

Your momentum would absolutely be preserved. In fact, depending on the quality of the teleporter and the technology involved, it might be a huge issue if you've got any momentum at all, seeing as how you might end up moving in the warp due to your preserved momentum, coming out somewhere wildly different than you expected.

Enemy NPC, equipped with Displacer Field, was running from my players. PCs didn't know anything about this and fired full-auto with their stun guns at the guy. As he was shunted through Warp I used dice to scatter him and to see what direction he would end up running.

His glorious escape ended up 10 metres forward and 90 degrees turn to left. So he ran full pelt to a brick wall. Needless to say he was stunned and arrested.

I don't really see why shortcutting through a realm of formless psychic energy, where the laws of material physics no longer apply, would necessarily preserve your momentum or orientation in any way, shape, or form. There's no convincing reason to take conservation of momentum into account here. Even if the Warp did not lie utterly outside of Newtonian physics, what's to say that your momentum wouldn't or couldn't be dissipated or changed during your little jaunt in Hell? You are actually physically entering a different medium and interacting with it to some extent (well, probably). If I'm running next to a swimming pool, am thrown into the pool, and them swim around and clamber back up to where I would have been had I kept running, I'm probably not going to have the same momentum as if I had just kept running.

I don't really see why shortcutting through a realm of formless psychic energy, where the laws of material physics no longer apply, would necessarily preserve your momentum or orientation in any way, shape, or form. There's no convincing reason to take conservation of momentum into account here. Even if the Warp did not lie utterly outside of Newtonian physics, what's to say that your momentum wouldn't or couldn't be dissipated or changed during your little jaunt in Hell? You are actually physically entering a different medium and interacting with it to some extent (well, probably). If I'm running next to a swimming pool, am thrown into the pool, and them swim around and clamber back up to where I would have been had I kept running, I'm probably not going to have the same momentum as if I had just kept running.

Just because you impacted some foreign material or were subjected to some twist of fate that changed your momentum, doesn't meant that your momentum when entering the Warp itself wasn't preserved. Your analogy with a swimming pool is terrible in context, because nobody ever said that your momentum couldn't change.

Objects in the warp moves just like all other objects, and when opening up warp rifts, you are literally using your momentum to enter them and move within the Immaterium. In no fashion, way, shape or form does this mean that there cannot be external forces within the Immaterium that might act upon you.

However, unless you're suicidal, you presumably have some kind of Gellar Field (or something that mimics it's effects) that would prevent that.

our momentum would absolutely be preserved.

I am contesting this assertion (with the pool analogy etc.). Why would it be?

Why do you think that objects in the Warp move like objects in the Materium? Conservation of momentum and every other physical assumption breaks down when you enter the warp. There's no reason to assume that you'll have be traveling at any particular speed in any particular direction when you leave, regardless of your disposition when you entered. It's your teleportation technology or your psychic powers that are effecting the warp-transition and the adjustments necessary to eject you where you will rematerialize, not your own physical movement.

Ok. Did you take into account the momentum of the ship you might be teleporting from in the future? Will your characters come teleporting in at 15 km./sec.?

Seriously, if you start applying reality to 40K, you're going to be in serious trouble. Just go for the Rule of Cool and steer clear of Monte Haul.

our momentum would absolutely be preserved.

I am contesting this assertion (with the pool analogy etc.). Why would it be?

Why do you think that objects in the Warp move like objects in the Materium? Conservation of momentum and every other physical assumption breaks down when you enter the warp. There's no reason to assume that you'll have be traveling at any particular speed in any particular direction when you leave, regardless of your disposition when you entered. It's your teleportation technology or your psychic powers that are effecting the warp-transition and the adjustments necessary to eject you where you will rematerialize, not your own physical movement.

If the Warp exerted an immediate force that somehow dissipated your momentum or changed the very definition of what momentum is, a ship would be immediately twisted, pulled apart or otherwise affected when any part of it entered the Immaterium. It is also debatable how it would even generate any momentum to move while in there, to get to where it needs to go.

The preservation of momentum is necessary for there to even be open rifts in the first place. Like I said, however, this doesn't mean that there cannot be other forces within the Warp that acts upon your pre-existing momentum - the water in the pool, so to say; it might be harder to move in there, it might be easier to move in there, or there may even be cascade storms consisting of cluster headaches and the colour apple.

Furthermore, any jaunt into the warp needs to be shielded in one fashion or another. Gellar Fields do this by preserving an "island" of realspace around the ship, preventing the laws of physics from going bananas (sometimes literally). Unless I read my textbooks in high school physics wrong, this would include momentum. More likely than not, anyone without protection identical or similar to this would be instantly torn apart or otherwise adversely affected (your spleen is now cinnamon, said the GM and cackled).

Ok. Did you take into account the momentum of the ship you might be teleporting from in the future? Will your characters come teleporting in at 15 km./sec.?

Seriously, if you start applying reality to 40K, you're going to be in serious trouble. Just go for the Rule of Cool and steer clear of Monte Haul.

I think you may be overthinking this.

I think you may be overthinking this.

Brings into a mind very old D&D game.

I think you may be overthinking this.

Hang a rope from a hole in the ceiling. Put a sign on the rope. It doesn't matter if the sign says "pull" or "don't pull." They'll pull it. The only thing that remains to be seen is the antics they will go through before pulling it.

Huh. My group would scan it with any equipment they have available, cast every kind of divination known to man and roll more knowledge checks than there are in the game before pulling an unknown rope. Then, if they still don't know what it does, they would nuke it from orbit just to be safe.

Huh. My group would scan it with any equipment they have available, cast every kind of divination known to man and roll more knowledge checks than there are in the game before pulling an unknown rope. Then, if they still don't know what it does, they would nuke it from orbit just to be safe.

Oh, time is acting wonky? Hmm, I wonder if it could be something with the Warp? Too bad none of you have Forbidden Lore (The Warp). What's that? You think it might be an eldar in disguise? Too bad none of you know jack **** about xenos.

They're currently a group of heretics running around Port Wander, dressed up as an inquisitorial retinue, like headless chickens that have gotten it into their heads that they're going to steal another ship because their current ship (The Chains of Judgement) has a few daemons that aren't even belligerent.

Dammit. Players.

They'd pull the rope just because they can't come up with anything else. I'll prove it. Next session, there'll be a rope from a cealing. One of the players is in a perfect scene for it, exploring on her own. There'll be a rope and a black hole. I can even make it hang from the floor and she'll still climb up (down?) it.

I keep trying to get my players to get Lore skills. So far, they've got no really useful ones, and they keep having issues because of it.

Oh, time is acting wonky? Hmm, I wonder if it could be something with the Warp? Too bad none of you have Forbidden Lore (The Warp). What's that? You think it might be an eldar in disguise? Too bad none of you know jack **** about xenos.

You know, I usually recommend a level approach. Meet your players half-way, make accomodations, be generally nice, that sort of thing.

But for this I'll make an exception. Kill them all.

Dammit. Players.

They'd pull the rope just because they can't come up with anything else. I'll prove it. Next session, there'll be a rope from a cealing. One of the players is in a perfect scene for it, exploring on her own. There'll be a rope and a black hole. I can even make it hang from the floor and she'll still climb up (down?) it.

Here , this is way much better idea from Home Alone 2.

Couldn't put this video so had to make link.