For a campaign this Winter, our GM is organizing a highly radical sort of Rogue Trader set up.

Thus I decided to go for a Explorator who has experienced Technological Enlightenment: a willingness to use Xeno technology.

Perusing the Source Book I was pretty underwelmed by the Xeno options.

I was thinking of using a Pulse (Tau) Carbine, but Pulse is weaker than Plasma, and more reliable...and in that case I'd rather use my starting Boltgun for its Tearing quality.

What do you guys think? Do you have any cool xeno-tech ideas?

Hrud Fusil from Disciples of the Dark Gods?

I'll have to borrow my friend's book to check that out.

100m range, single shot, 2d10E, Pen 5*, Clip 3, Reload 3Full. Specials Inaccurate, Overheats, Warp Weapon, Weight 4kg

* I house ruled it to ignore body armour entirely, but not natural.

The Avenger Shuriken Catapult from DH Creatures Anathema is a nasty piece of work, Basic 80m S/3/10 1d10+4R 6 100 2Full Reliable, Tearing

I see your Hrud Fusil and Shrukin Catapult and raise you a Slougth Necrotic Scepter for shear nastiness.

Edit:

rng: 100m, rof: s/-/-, 2d10+8E, PEN 6, Ammo: unlimited, Specia: Recharge, disintigrate

as a club

1d10+15E, PEN 4, Special: disintegrate

I see your Hrud Fusil and Shrukin Catapult and raise you a Slougth Necrotic Scepter for shear nastiness.

Fold. Fold and disintegrate.

Graver said:

Thats just cruel. Anyone have a conversion for Necron Gauss weapons ?

The RH's aether lance a mere 2d5, but no armor, no toughness, no pyschic defenses. Not valid against daemons, nulls,robots, and hexigramic wards.

T-800 said:

Call me Buzz Killington if you will, but as a GM I'd never allow player characters to use Necron weapons. Their firing mechanisms are simply too alien to be a simple manner of pulling a "trigger", and it's not even sure that Gauss weapons would actually work unless carried by a Necron.

Then there's that pesky little fact to consider that destroyed Necrons phase out leaving no trace behind (that includes their gauss weapons as well), so I have a hard time seeing how a player character would actually be able to get a hold of one, let alone being able to fire one...

Radical's handbook should have some fun goodies in it too now that that's just come out.

It's relatively easy to draw out from the codexes what the damage on stuff is for damage rating and armor pen, all that needs to be really played with is rate of fire/clip capacity (we put tau pulse rifles at 2d10E Pen 4, S/2(or 3 I forget off top of my head)/-, range same as a lasgun, because, tabletop, it has the strength heavy bolter, the pen of a regular bolter, and it's a rapid fire weapon (though with RT giving bolters full auto function, I could see it being S/2/4 or 5) and a clip of... 22 I think or 24 (since that was its clip size in Fire Warrior). For a pulse carbine, I gave it the same stats, but only Single shot and accurate, to reflect its ability to pin like a sniper rifle from the 40k tabletop game.

Varnius is partially right in that a necron when it goes splat will phase out to its point of origin/recall/etc. IF you were lucky enough to stomp a necron, at its recall spot, you could get the weapon only if you disabled/destroyed/etc its point of origin, or somehow made the being completely unable to phase out, and I can't think of any ways to do that off of the top of my head. However, Gauss flayers are a usable weapon, they appeared in the original Inquisitor game as usable by your acolytes.

and as for how a player can get one and not have it phase out (yet), well, there just might be a world a small detachment of the Disciples of Thul are currently exploring far out in the expanse that just might have some technological marvels as of yet unseen and unguessed amidst it's ancient tombs...

BrotherHostower said:

The point of origin of any Necron unit (be it a lowly scarab or a Necron Lord) would be it's parent Tomb. I say: "Good Luck" in destroying a Necron Tomb so fast that it wouldn't have sufficient time to summon all Necron units "out in the field" to itself in order to defend itself better agaisnt whatever threatening attack it is faced with. Meaning of course that if the attack is successful, then any and all Necrons (and their weapons) would be obliterated along with the parent Tomb.

The only thing I've seen so far as how to stop a Necron from teleporting back to it's parent tomb once it has been taken out of comission, was a converted miniature (serving as an objective marker) in white dwarf that depicted a Mechanicus Adept standing next to a device that apparently held a crippled Necron warrior trapped in a stasis field in order to prevent it from phasing out. Although this was just a miniature and i didn't have any accompanying fluff explaining if such a thing was actually possible.

BrotherHostower said:

I doubt the "usable by your acolytes" part here, mostly because Inquisior is a narrative battle game, resembling a role playing game very much. For all intents and purposes, the stats for the Necrontyr Gauss Flayer could just as well be intended to be used by Necrons in a game of Inquisitor rather than being intended to be used by human hands.

Also, humans using these weapons would contradict a lot of other fluff that has been written about Gauss weaponry.

Indeed.

If one look at the picture in the Necron Codex it is clear that Gauss weapons does not even have a trigger.

Varnias Tybalt said:

Considering that Necrons never got rules in Inquisitor, and that it was written when the only official Necron imagery was holdovers from their late 2nd edition appearance at Sanctuary 101 (one of the models of which was a Necron warrior pointing his flayer up in the air, and with one finger clearly resting on the trigger) I suspect that they did intend it to be used by the acolytes of an Inquisitorial warband, especially since they were proud of the Monty Haul sandbox nature of the game in general.

As for getting hold of one without it phasing out- kill the warrior carrying it with EMP. It apparently acts to shut down electronics and psykers, so I would assume it would work to interfere with a robot trying to teleport away through the warp...

All that said, I suspect that the only 'humans' capable of using gauss weaponry are infiltrating Necron lords, so even if people could capture some, finding someone who could use it would be a Bad Thing .

Alasseo said:

Well, as far as getting one, that's a pritty good plan, though it has two problems which would need to be ironed out first. One, the necrons aren't robots and two, they don't teleport through the warp. Other then that... ;-)

Alasseo said:

I just had the image of the infiltrating Necron lord and it made me laugh (largely as rather then a terminator esk infiltrator I got the mental image of a necron lord cutting off and wearing someones face like a mask rather like that guy from the Voyager epissode Faces)

NL: (wearing some guy's face) "HELLO MY FELLOW HUMANS, SHALL WE GO INJEST ORGANIC MATERIAL TO SUSTAIN OUR PUNY FLESHY BODIES, AS HUMANS WE MUST DO THIS TO SUSTAIN OUR EXISTANCE AS SOFT FLESHY BAGS FULL OF MEAT AND THAT IS WHAT I AM, A HUMAN AND NOT IN ANY WAY AN EVIL ROBOT"

Acolyte: "Um....."

Gaus weaponss are regarded as impossible by imperial science (they've tried) and as they are physically plugged into the Necron they probably won't work if removed. And all that assumes that you can remove it and it doesn't phase out.....

Alasseo said:

Well, to be fair, many things didn't get official rules for Inquisitor but were still used (even by the players featured in White Dwarf articles). That was sort of the point with the game. Less tactical and "balanced" gaming philosophy, and more sandbox and narrativism.

Then of course there's he shift in setting like you mention. Back then, a Necron Guass Flayer might have been usable by human hands, but since, the fluff has been rewritten and extrapolated upon and I doubt that Games Workshop would let humans be able to use such Necron weapons now. It would contradict the most recent fluff about Necrons and their weapons.

Unknown said:

That's assuming that Necrons actually work on the same principles of electronics as we understand them. One has to remember what we're talking about alien technology here, vastly superior to anything that humans have ever built or even entertained science-fiction ideas about, but still equally alien in nature as even the most wierd piece of wraithbone based Eldar tech.

For all we know, Necrons might not even be powered by electricity coing through electrical circuits. EMP only works if whatever you intend to destroy works by using electronic circuits that will be fried by the sudden burst of atmospheric electricity released by an electro magnetic pulse. If the machine doesn't even use such things, then EMP wouldn't do anything to harm it.

Also, I think it would be rather safe to assume that all Necron machines are insulated against EMP shockwaves, and even if they're not, their self-repair mechanisms would be more than capable of repairing any damaged circuits due to EMP attacks. Even the Power Armour of the Imperium can take being hit by EMP's without shutting down and leave it's wearer paralyzed within a heavy suit of steel and sci-fi materials. If they can take it, then so could the Necrons without breaking a sweat.

It's not impossible (just highly, highly improbable) that a Rogue Trader will be part of an endeavor that sees the destruction/disabling of a Necron Tomb (though what an Endeavor that would make!). The sheer scale of the game stands that by the end, your RT could be leading a grand crusade into the Halo stars at the head of a fleet of starships, regments of Imperial Guard and even companies of Space Marines (and the Necron homeworld is even in the Halo Stars).

That being said, it's probably more likely that they will run into a dreaded Tomb Ship and may even disable it through sheer volume of damage in space combat and be able to lay claim to their weaponry. There is precedent (even past the Inquisitor book) for being able to use Necron weaponry, assassins of the Callidus temple have been using C'Tan phase swords since their inception in the game. These may have been looted from a disabled Tomb, taken and "reforged" from their own war scythes, etc. Why didn't they loot the gauss flayers? because they're bulky, large (even on a Necron the rifle itself is almost as big as it is, and it's as big as a space marine), and very, very clearly alien. In Rogue Trader, I'd probably treat them as being like a space marine bolter, needing something like a strength of 40 and/or bulging biceps to wield one without a penalty, and probably very limited ammunition as I have a feeling that those power cores probably draw from the Necron it's armed by and would only have whatever it has left stored in it for shots.

BrotherHostower said:

Usually when Imperials (including Rogue Traders) run into Necron Tomb's, they don't know it's a Necron Tomb to begin with. They tamper around with it and suddenly it's guards awake and kill everyone whom it may concern. The Imperial response to this is usually to nuke the entire site from orbit and blast everything back to it's constuent atoms.

You don't "disable" a Necron Tomb and loot it to your hearts content. You either invade it when it is still inactive (and will most likely inadvertetly activate it) or you blast it apart from orbit and just hope that the Tomb doesn't hide a big bad Tombship or something that rise from the wreckage and destroy you, or that a nearby Necron fleet teleports in and do the same thing.

BrotherHostower said:

As I said, there is no "disabling" of anything Necron. You either destroy it completely or it will slip through your fingers (even their starships "phase out" if they become crippled).

BrotherHostower said:

C'Tan phase swords are rumoured to be made of the same stuff as the C'Tan's necrodermis. The C'Tan Necrodermis is made from living necron metal (as is most things built by the Necrontyr). The living metal in this case seems to be some sort of nanorobotic "grey goo" capable of partial replication (thus being able to repair even the most extreme injury sustained by Necron machinery). However, even the living metal can become overloaded and incapable of self-repair in some cases (Necrons being crushed under tanks for instance cannot repair themselves, and certain power weapons can also make them incapable of self-repairing unless a Resurrection Orb is present).

Naturally it's safe to assume that the bombardment of starship weapons would have the same effect on pretty much all exotic alloys that Necron technology is built from.

I'd say that the C'Tan phase swords are most likely constructed and forged from miniscule amounts of harvested living metal from Necron Tombs that have already been destroyed. Most of the complicated pieces of Necron technology would have naturally been obliterated by such damage, but small amounts of non-inert living metal might still be possible to harvest (and we can assume that the Adeptus Mechanicus would comb even obliterated Necron ruins for this stuff if there's a chance it can be found).

You could compare it to a Space Marine Land Raider being blown to pieces, and along comes an Ork and decides to fashion a choppa out of some of the armoured plates from the Land Raider. The choppa wouldn't be nearly as sophisticated as an entire tank used by the Adeptus Astartes, but it would probably be a pretty durable and formidable choppa in comparison to the more primitive version made through Orkish manufacture (i.e taking some raw ore and beating it until it has the "ko-ekt shape")

BrotherHostower said:

I'd rather say that it is because there wouldn't be any gauss flayers to loot, because they would have been destroyed as the rest of the tomb. According to the most recent fluff regarding Necrons (the Codex: Necrons), no significant piece of Necron Technology has ever been captured.

So far they have been able to pick at some scraps that might have been left behind after having blown up a Necron Tomb, but nothing even close to the sophistication of a Gauss Flayer. In fact, even the chapter that describes an Adeptus Mechanicus study of Necron weaponry is all based on guesswork and after-action reports. They didn't actually have a piece of Gauss weaponry to prod and tinker around with. Hence why there are many gaps in the theory of how they work, because the AdMech just don't know since they have never even had the chance to study anything moresophisticated than the odd inert piece of living metal.

BrotherHostower said:

That's your prerogative of course. Personally though I wouldn't ever let a player character be able to loot a true Necron weapon. Necrons are the kind of foe that you must try to destroy outright and as fast as possible (or at least make them phase out) before they get a chance to fully awaken and erase you and your ship from existence.

This makes them seem like the really scary xenos that they are intended to be. The one so terrifying that the Inquisition and the Imperial authorities knows that they couldn't beat them in a stand up fight and thus try to cover up most information regarding their existence (remember that a bunch of Shroud class cruisers managed to land on the surface of Mars itself, bypassing pretty much everything the Imperial defences could muster).

This will also make those small snippets of revealed lore regarding the Necrons seem that much more special. Basically the player characters are supposed to feel priviliged just by escaping with their lives and that they managed to acquire some pretty darn obscure knowledge about this mythical xenos race. If they start prospecting in "how to loot a Gauss flayer" they would be pushing their luck.

Is the Aethyr Lance from RH a Necron device? I am not up on all the 40k background, only what I have in DH and RT.

Is the Aethyr Lance from RH a Necron device?

Without having seen it, probably not. Aethyr sounds like the warp is involved, which is a pretty certain indicator that the Necrons aren't doing it (unless it's for shutting down any connection to it).

Cifer said:

I'd need to look it up for the race that creates them, but it's not necrons. I'm not sure it's warp technology.