Varnias Tybalt said:

I can't imagine the Techpriests allowing a Cleric into the Lathes for that purpose.

Katsue said:

Why not? Just because they belong to separate cults it doesn't mean that they are forbidden to interact with eachother. Even cathedrals to the god emperor needs to have lightbulbs changed from time to time, and I doubt any cleric would whine at the Techpriests replacing them.

The same goes for paying customers in the Lathes. The Lathes are still a business centre of sorts, and if a Cleric is a paying customer and want something as expensive as a Lathe blade (which is supposed to be a best quality weapon once finished), certain customization and personalization is expected. IF the AdMech recieve the specs for which prayers and incantations are supposed to be engraved on the blade, they wouldn't likely have any problem to do it, and there's nothing stopping the Cleric from completing the sanctification of the weapon later on by splashing holy water at it and attach a bunch of purity seals etc. etc.

So, the Radical's Handbook has a rather long opening section which focuses on a Moritat whose weapon of choice is a Power Stilletto.

My favourite Lathe Blade idea is having one forged with permanent Pentagrammic Wards.

Hodgepodge said:

Really?! Then why the hell cant Moritats use power swords in this forum?

Katsue said:

I dont see where it says they have to make a WP test to use a non-edged melee weapon, just one for using ranged weapons that aren't edged and pprimitive, like guns. The only drawback from them using a power weapon is the lack of 'tearing' from The Bloody Edge since it isnt rending damage. Also if you dont like the limitations to ranged combat for Moritats, then dont play one. Before choosing Moritat, you should be very clear about how they will function in a protracted gun battle. When I created mine, I knew from the jump that I would have to be creative when the guns came out.

I'm curious to see if the 'official' ruling for power weapons and Moritats will change with the intro in the Radicals Handbook involving one using a power stiletto as a weapon of choice.

The rules for the Bloody Edge trait say nothing about requiring Rending type damage to get the Tearing benefit, only that the weapon requires an edge. Likewise, it states that they must make the WP test to use any weapon without an edge.

Reading "requires an edge" as "requires Rending damage" amounts to houseruling the power. That's not a mystery. If the writer had wanted to make the Rending game mechanic relevant to the application of the trait, he would have used the term. There's no need for a ruling to determine that a word that is not in the text is, in fact, actually not in the text. Although if you want to read it that way, Moritat not only can use Needle Rifles, but get Tearing with them. But for some reason a Daemon Weapon with the Dark Fire trait is unusuable by them because its damage type changed to Energy.

Death Cult Assassins in the tabletop game have Power Swords (or had, I'm not entirely up to date) and Moritat are basically Death Cult Assassins...

So fluff wise I would say the Powersword is a weapon a Moritat would use.

If they can still use tearing when using a powersword I would also say yes...

The Moritat are suppose to be the absolute swordmasters, so without the tearing they would be equal or less than a Cleric or Guardsman.

Santiago said:

Well, from the Radical's Handbook, we know they aren't exactly a "death cult".

Also, as part of being master swordsmen, it suggests they believe in the purity of the blade. Perhaps they consider a powersword unpure, compared to the purity of metal on flesh and blood?

Remember, the person writing the fiction will, quite possibly, not have read the rules, or if they have, not thought to ask FFG about powerweapons and the Moritat special rule.

Actually, the Moritat is exactly a death cult. We know this because they are introduced with the words "The Moritat is an Imperial Death Cult, far older than Calixis itself.'"

I'm pretty sure the person writing the fiction in question just had no reason to believe that they were bound by a restriction which has no basis in the rules, fluff, or anything but the heads of a small group of players. The IH and RH have a rather large overlap in writers, so it's actually quite possible that the person who wrote the fiction in the RH also invented the Moritat for the IH in the first place.

And Ross Watson, the head developer of Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader, so sorry, that's a straw man argument right there. If you wish to disagree with the man who runs the WH40k RPG development team, that's up to you, but that means you are houseruling, rather than following the RAW.

And actually, you'd be surprised how often the people who write the fiction know nothing about the rules.

He's the lead designer, but he was also answering a question off the cuff, whereas I'm actually reading the rules as written and released. Obviously, if he prefers Moritat to not be able to benefit from the Blood Edge trait with power weapons, he's in the perfect position to issue erratta to that effect. That doesn't change the fact that doing so would require altering the currently published material.

In terms of currently published material, for his position to be accurate, one would have to literally pretend where are words in the current text for the trait that are not there and outright contradict the supplimentary fluff for the class.

So lead deisgner or not, his answer at best reflects a position which is a reversal of that taken in currently (and recently) published material and is in that sense currently "wrong." Ultimately he may well change the rules as written and it may be his intent to do so, but he has yet to do so in this case.

"You should check out Radical's Handbook then, that has a significantly different origin for them."

I actually just reskimmed the entire book because you're a great poster and I might have missed something, but all I can come up with is that you're getting Mortitat mixed up with Mortiturge or something.

The Radical's handbook does specifically refer to the Mortitat as a Death Cult several times, however.

Hodgepodge said:

You can't really claim that he's "altering currently published material" either, because The Bloody Edge trait isn't something that has existed for years within 40K canon at all, it is a game mechanical invention of BI and FFG which they decide which types of characters will benefit from under which circumstances.

Death Cultist assassins hasn't always possessed the bloody edge trait, it hasn't even been described in any GW production (unless the Inquisitor game has it, im not really sure because im not overly familiar with that game or it's rules), hence Ross Watson and the other guys and gals at FFG are perfectly within their rights to force Moritat Reapers to not benefit from the bloody edge trait with power weapons if they want it, and without creating an inconsistency. It's their invention after all.

Here's the way I see it: Moritat Reapers can use power swords without having to take the WP test to actually be able to wield them, BUT hey may not benefit from having the tearing quality simply because the power sword is edged, because it isn't the edge of the power sword that's doing the damage but the power field around it.

And if someone wish to complan that it makes the moritats "too useless" as swordfighters if they can't benefit from the extra tearing bonus to power blades then I'll have to say that I don't agree with the position that moritat's has to be elite sword fighters. Angharad and Arianhod of Carthae in the Eisenhorn and Ravenor books are from a culture that breeds superior sword fighters, the moritat are more like a cult of assassins specializing in bloodletting. Granted they are very good at bloodletting, and their system of faith make them prefer bladed and serrated weapons that can cut and slice and thus spill as much blood as possible, but that doesn't by default make them "elite swordfighters". They could just as well be a bunch of serial killers who know exactly which bloodvessels to cut in order to spill the most amount of blood possible. That's why they get Tearing with most bladed weapons, not because they possess ninja-esque 1337-skillz with swords.

And it still doesn't make the powersword "useless" for moritat reapers either, even if they can't benefit from tearing. It is ulimately one of the few bladed, melee weapons that actually provide a decent Pen value unlike most other bladed weapons, making it extremely useful against heavily armourerd targets, even without the tearing quality.

Varnias Tybalt said:

This makes sense.

Ignore the blank post above this one. I had a palsied moment.

Jlid said:

Indeed, that's what I'm going to be using too.

Also remember that the Moritat is only one death cult out of countless other death cults. Not every death cult revolves around blades.

Everybody likes their super-cutty-uber-melee-I use swords instead of guns-future-leet-ninja, but even they have their limitations.

Varnias Tybalt said:

There's no basis for such a ruling. The rules for The Bloody Edge read "they must pass a Hard (-20) Willpower test to use any weapon lacking an "edge" in combat...However, such is their deadly artistry at bloodletting, any edged weapon wielded by them counts as having the Tearing quality...". If they don't inflict Tearing damage with power swords, it can only be because it lacks an edge, in which case they have to make the Willpower test to be able to use them*.

Also, your assertion that the Moritat are not intended to be elite swordfighters is contradicted in numerous places by the writeup of the Moritat, and in particular, the Moritat Reaper.

* Unless they're fighting Chaos Marines or the like, in which case they might as well break out their Melta Pistol.

Varnias Tybalt said:

By "currently published material," I mean the RAW for the trait in the IH (which contains absolutely nothing which would exclude a Power Sword from its effect) and the fluff in the RH (which contains a Mortitat character whose weapon of choice is Powered), not GW material.

The matter of whether or not the Mortitat are Death Cult assassins is a secondary argument (if you can call it that because they literally say "Moritat Death Cult" every time they even mention them in passing...).

I think it's irrelevant if a power blade is a Moritats weapon of choice. It's a question of whether a Moritat using a power blade AND getting the effects of Bloody Edge is over powered? I would lean toward yes, that combo is overpowered when you get the pen and tearing effect combined without the ammo and weight restriction implicit in ballistic weapons. Also when you take into account that it is a power field doing the cutting and not a physical blade I think it's reasonable to not allow that trait to stack with a power weapon. If I were playing a Moritat I would carry a power sword and Lathe blade for the same reason my guardsman carries a combi-VanheimArmageddon and a grenade launcher. So he can have the right tool for the job at hand.

Katsue said:

The basis is clear enough.

Moritat's can't use weapons lacking an "edge". Though "edged" weapons even encompass really far fetched examples (like arrows and bolts for bows and crossbows). Power swords don't lack an edge, they have an edge and are designed as a normal sword. BUT according to latest rulings from FFG, Power Swords won't benefit from the Tearing quality normally applied to edged weapons used by Moritat's. That doesn't take away the edge from the Power Sword, it just says that it won't get Tearing.

Thus Moritat's CAN use power swords without WP-tests because they don't lack an edge, it just doesn't get to benefit from Tearing at the same time.

Katsue said:

The Moritat background package doesn't mention anything that all assassins belonging to the Moritat cult are intended to be "elite swordfighters". In fact, the only mention of preference for weaponry is listed under the "Bloody Edge" trait, and all it says is:

"the Moritat disdains modern weapons as crude and spiritually unfulfilling, prefering instead the sacred edge of the blade."

Many weapons have blades and edges, not just swords. Be it knives, throwing knives, swords, sabres, bayonettes, stilettos, throwing stars, axes, meat cleavers, chainsaws (or "chainswords" in the case of 40K), certain arrows and crossbow bolts etc. etc.

These are all viable weapons in the eyes of the Moritat, and the cult description doesn't mention anything about: All Moritat assassins are leet swordfighters.

Of course, it doesn't mean that they are "bad" with swords, it just means that they don't use swords exclusively but a wide assortment of bladed and possibly serrated weapons, because it is pretty useful when it comes to spilling a lot of blood. (which their cult is explicitly all about, even the Moritat Reaper rank mention bloodletting as being extremely important for the cult in question)

Even the description for the narrow and specialized Moritat Reapers don't even mention the word "sword" at all, it only mentions "blades". And blades can come in a wide variety of designs and methods of application.

The Moritat and their Reapers are about bloodletting, not swordfighting...

ItsUncertainWho said:

This is total nonsense. A Guardsman can haul an autocannon around and one-shot Chaos Marines. (Technically, Full Auto them to death.) Making Power Swords Tearing adds less damage than letting an Assassin purchase Crushing Blow as an Elite Advance. It is simply not a big deal.

Varnias Tybalt said:

No. Read the Trait. If it is ruled that Moritat Assassins don't get the benefit from their Trait when they use a Power Sword, then it can only be because Power Swords are not considered by FFG and the doctrine of the Moritat Death Cult to be Edged Weapons, since they get the benefit with all Edged Weapons, so they must make a Willpower roll to use them, because they're not Edged Weapons, in any circumstances where they could damage their target with another weapon at their disposal. You can't have it both ways.

Katsue said:

There is the clause in the Bloody Edge Trait that they must make a WP test "unless they obviously have no chance of harming their enemy otherwise". So it could be perfectly in keeping with the rules for a Moritat to run around with an edged power weapon and receive the Tearing quality through the use of the Bloody Edge Trait so long as the power field is inactive. Once they run into a heavily armoured or non-living target it is within their belief system to enable the power field (but they won't get the Tearing Quality with such attacks) or whip out an inferno pistol. It may be crude and spiritually unfulfilling but at least you live to fight another day.

Er, I'm pretty sure fanatic assassins who actually have to force themselves through sheer willpower to use a gun because of their creed probably don't intentionally choose to carry weapons that violate their cult's strictures. For otherwise good posters, your arguments are getting really, really absurd.

Watson's answer may reflect planned erratta, but it's not a published ruling, and it contradicts the current rules text in horribly blatant ways. The rules text allows for three scenarios: 1) the weapon is not edged and the Mortitat requires an WP test to use it, 2) the Mortitat has no chance of harming their target st all unless they use a non-edged weapon and therefore may use one without a WP test, 3) the weapon is edged and the Mortitat gains Tearing with it.

These rules outright do not allow for a scenario in which a weapon is both edged, allowing the Mortitat to use it in line with his cult's teaching BUT for some reason does not grant Tearing. There is no way to read them that way, period. Therefore, Ross' answer may at best reflect a planned alteration to the rules text; it cannot possibly reflect the currently published rules.

Also, the text actually does say that they get tearing because they're just really good at using edged weapons- albeit in a particular way, ie to cause bleeding: "However, such is their deadly artistry at bloodletting that any edged weapon weilded by them counts as having the Tearing quality when used against living targets." In other words, they don't just like weapons that draw blood especially effectively. Were that the case they would favour weapons which already have Tearing. Rather, they are very good at using edged weapons to draw blood.

Keep in mind that there is also a real limitation to this trait: it only functions against living targets. So, it does not function against enemies with the Machine trait, Daemons, etc, even if they happen to bleed.

Varnias Tybalt said:

I'd also suggest that a power weapon most certainly would come under the heading of "modern weapon" because, hell, it has a power field generator built into it.