"Tier: 1
Prerequisite: Intelligence 30
Aptitudes: Intelligence, Tech
Either through the ease of long practice, or the proper ritual to appease a weapon’s machine spirit, the character can clear stoppages with a simple knock or solid smack of his hand to a weapon. The character may un-jam any gun as a Half Action, but may only use this Talent on one weapon per Round. The character must touch the weapon (often quickly and violently) to make this Talent work."

Hello everyone have recently been playng Only War with my friends, but I have a rules question that myself and my GM cannot agree on.

Our regiment has the "Techncal Knock" talent (described above) and my GM's understanding is that you just unjam at a half action rather than a full action. He says we still have to the BS test to unjam and that we still have to reload.

My understanding is that the point of this talent is you just unjam at a half action, no BS test required.

Part of the reason we're having the argument is because I think the GM thinks this talent would be over powered if you dont have to do a BS test, but isn't the point of talents to make things easier?

What do you guys think?

The wording is ambiguous enough that I could see both perspectives justified. Strictly speaking (meaning: in Rules Lawyer Language), you are correct in that the Talent does not mention a BS Test, and as such it should not be required.

That being said, would the Talent not make "things easier" already by turning a Full Action into a Half one, too? Your GM's concern seems to be that it would make things too easy if you remove the BS Test in addition to this.

Whether that's true or not is difficult to say as it depends a lot on on how close your squad comes to being overrun by enemy forces, meaning how challenging your games usually are.

However, in my personal opinion, I don't really think that Ammo Jams should decide the outcome of an encounter as they just do not occur all that often, and as such their role for balancing purposes seems to be exaggerated.

Yeah you can read it as either "You may automatically unjam a weapon (return it from jammed to normal) as a half action." or "You may make a "unjam action" as a half action rather than a full action."

If i was a GM i'd be inclined to let you guys unjam without BS test. (Skill is not that OP in my opnion)

This is how we fix things in russia!

Worth noting that the jam will still screw your ammo, so you will need to reload. My group has ruled that ammo thusly lost requires only a short technomat/tech-use test to make useable.

I've always wondered, what if you don't have another magazine to unjam with? Say you are on your last mag, and the gun jams. As RAW, you need to reload and do the BS test. Can you reload with the same magazine? I would think so, as in the real world if a magazine fed weapon jams, you remove the magazine, unblock the action, and reload the magazine back into the weapon.

As per the RAW, I'd say no.

It may be part of the necessary abstraction that comes with crafting a mechanic meant to apply to all sorts of ranged weapons from crossbows to single action revolvers to fully-automatic laser rifles. With a ballistic weapon, you may be able to clear the action and simply eject the faulty round (deducting it from your ammo counter) before re-inserting the same clip. With a lasgun, on the other hand? There's nothing to eject, so what caused the malfunction? There must be something wrong with the chargepack. Same for plasma weapons, flamethrowers, and so on.

If you really wanted to, I suppose you could create additional rules for every category of weapons, but it may be argued that the game is already fairly rules-heavy as-is. It's really something that should be discussed with the GM and the rest of the group, though, to determine your local consensus.

The Solid Projectile Expertise talent allows you to do that with SP weapons.

Personally, for Technical Knock, I allow it to auto clear jams as a half action without a test, because jams screw you over plenty already, and I figure it would specify "unjam as a Half-Action with a Challenging (+0) Ballistic Skill test" or something to that effect.

If we go by the RAW, I would say no. There is no mention of the Talent "Technical Knock" requiring a BS test, nor does it mention anything in the Errata (unless I missed something. Don't think I did.)

Personnally, I agee with SgtLazarus's reasoning. It was my same train of thought exactly before I got to his post.

Also, first post. Don't know if that's required to be announced on these boards, but here you go. Long time lurker however.

@cpteveros - Baseline required time for a tech-use test (repair) is 1 minute. I would say it takes a character about this long to properly cleanse and realign his munitions so as not to offend his most sacred armament. That timeline can be shaken up using the Security ruling that shortens by 10 seconds per degree of success, or via the Accelerated Repairs ruling that -30 to the test cuts repair time in half (or both). Failure could potentially involve the weapon becoming unreliable, or gaining overheat/recharge depending on the weapon type. There's plenty of GM wiggle room in terms of how borked your ammo is.

@cpteveros - Baseline required time for a tech-use test (repair) is 1 minute. I would say it takes a character about this long to properly cleanse and realign his munitions so as not to offend his most sacred armament. That timeline can be shaken up using the Security ruling that shortens by 10 seconds per degree of success, or via the Accelerated Repairs ruling that -30 to the test cuts repair time in half (or both). Failure could potentially involve the weapon becoming unreliable, or gaining overheat/recharge depending on the weapon type. There's plenty of GM wiggle room in terms of how borked your ammo is.

Given that a single round of combat is supposed to take only a dozen seconds or so, that seems quite damning for a single jam. What my group has always done as a houserule was that unjamming is analogous to reloading, in that it is just the amount of time required to reload the weapon. No Tech-Use test, no BS test, just a reload. This was done to not only speed up combat, but to reflect the fact that a Guardsman should understand how to unjam his weapon by default.

I'm not referring to the unjam action, but to recovery of the ammo. I believe the half action BS test in the book is fair for unjamming (probably a +10 or +20 test, a challenging test is a bit rough), and that the guardsman can simply reload after clearing the jam if they have another ammo pack.

EDIT - if using an ammo backpack, such as with a hellgun, I don't think the whole thing should short out. Maybe 1/3rd ammo loss.

Jamming a weapon is an important aspect of the theme of Only War. Guardsmen are cogs in an enormous and temperamental machine. The jamming of a weapon at an important time is one of many reasons why guardsmen simply die. If a Guardsman wants to avoid this danger, they ought preserve their weapon, requisition higher quality armaments, carry spare ammunition, keep to cover and use tactics that account for possible jams.

Or spend fate points.

I'm not referring to the unjam action, but to recovery of the ammo. I believe the half action BS test in the book is fair for unjamming (probably a +10 or +20 test, a challenging test is a bit rough), and that the guardsman can simply reload after clearing the jam if they have another ammo pack.

EDIT - if using an ammo backpack, such as with a hellgun, I don't think the whole thing should short out. Maybe 1/3rd ammo loss.

Jamming a weapon is an important aspect of the theme of Only War. Guardsmen are cogs in an enormous and temperamental machine. The jamming of a weapon at an important time is one of many reasons why guardsmen simply die. If a Guardsman wants to avoid this danger, they ought preserve their weapon, requisition higher quality armaments, carry spare ammunition, keep to cover and use tactics that account for possible jams.

Or spend fate points.

Yor mentionof the ammo loss wih a back pack. My understanding of this is that even though it has a back-pack ammo source there is still a clip size. So when a back pack particularily with Las weapons, that portion of the ammo is lost. I.e. if the clip holds 30 rounds whilest in a back-pack module. then the reload time is simply refering to the recharge rate of the back-pack itself. so if the back-pack only looses what was left in that current mag. That is at least how we are approaching it, and our team of players and myself are rather new to this game but also would like feedback if we are doing that wrong.

If a backpack ammo pack jams, you lose all of the ammunition contained within the backpack. Can be mitigated for solid projectile weapons using the Solid Projectile Expertise talent.

Thanks Lazarus, That would explain why most of the time those weapons are reliable. And I have a quick follow up. Being a back-pack weapon when the backpack is depleated/jams. Can a Stormtooper carry around single mags or does the 'Hot-Shot-Las-Gun' require the back-pack at all times?

Standard issue is the backpack, but needless to say, it's your game, so you could just as well overrule this aspect.

In Dark Heresy, these weapons could be used with a backpack or a more traditional box-style clip (at I think 50% capacity?). That was a different game, but you could easily import the idea. Aside from the fact that you could just change the entire weapon's description to conform to whatever you want to achieve here. It all depends on just how far you want to deviate from your preferred sources.

Thanks Lazarus, That would explain why most of the time those weapons are reliable. And I have a quick follow up. Being a back-pack weapon when the backpack is depleated/jams. Can a Stormtooper carry around single mags or does the 'Hot-Shot-Las-Gun' require the back-pack at all times?

Well, if we go based on the artwork provided for Stormtroopers (I refuse to call them Tempestus whatevers apart from this post) I would have to go with the 10kg backpack is the ammo source. If you look at the 2nd column, 3rd paragraph of the Only War Core Rulebook it states that the Hot-Shot Laspistol & Lasgun "use a 10kg backpack power source rather than a standard plug-in pack..." which blah blah blah "make reloading more impractical."

Considering the tradeoff's of easy reload in conjunction with the murder death cannon (especially combined with certain talents and a certain Sergeant ability) that las weapons can become, the Hot-Shot weapons with their impractical reload, I would say just stick with the RAW and keep Hot-Shot's complicated reload. No reason to blow regular las weapons out of the water.

Personally, I quite like the Militarum Tempestus. Made of win.

But, I have a terrifying prospect for you.

Death Korps of Krieg firing line with Lucius 98 Lasguns on Overload with a Sergeant and assorted Lasgun talents.

d10 + 20 pen 2? Yes please.