A question that my friends and I have been kicking around for a while now, would a power weapon (power sword/axe, power fist, etc.) Cauterise a wound as it cuts? I know that weapons like lasguns, plasma, hellguns, and other laser weapons do, but would a power sword?

My stance on the whole thing is that it would, becasue it is said to be surrounded by a "disruptive energy field". Which I interpret to be some sort of crazy force field thing that would got very hot when in use. But I want to know what all you think.

No it wouldn't, lasguns use a high powered laser a power sword does not but as you said is surrounded by a power field, it slices through an opponent it dosn't burn.

Also, the word disruptive makes me think of bad things, like jagged edges and other unpleasentness, not cauterizing the wound as it passes.

Cryxx said:

The power field in question cause Energy damage, not Rending damage according to the rules. So it wouldn't be very off to assume that the weapon actually burn whatever it comes in contact with.

Personally though, we have changed the damage type of power weapons from Energy to either Rending damage or Impact damage depending on which weapon is being used (power swords = Rending, Power fist = Impact). But that's a houserule of ours and not something that goes along with the RAW.

The RAW says it cause energy damage, hence it might cause burns just like las weapons do...

Dyckman86 said:

The word "disruptive" in this case wouldn't have much to do with jagged edges, but rather a form of disruptive energy flow that apparently instantaneously collapse and breaks matter on atomic levels and thus generate a "cutting" effect. However, considering the energy requirements, I'd say that being able to slice through armour (like power armour) would require a heck of a lot of this disuptive energy, and the friction caused by this energy field would likely heat up anything it touches and would probably have no problem to severely singe and burn flesh it comes into contact with.

I always took the power field to disrupt the binding force between atoms, not doing much damage itself, but enhancing the damage of the core weapon. So the blade of a powersword instead of encountering hard metal and flesh, has to cut through something more like wet clay and Styrofoam. Which would mean in terms of damage, the effects of the weapon itself would be greatly enhanced. Hence a powersword would cleave people cleanly in half, where a power mace would crush and deform as a mace would but as if the target was made of soft clay. Which when you consider powerfists makes them pretty horrific.

Agmar_Strick said:

That's one theory, however if this was really the case, then Imperial "scientists" wouldn't be so flabbergasted over how Necron Gauss weapons work (these weapons all work by the principle of disrupting the force between atoms and thus de-construct any atomic structure that it hits and "flay" the target until it is dead). How this is achieved is a mystery to the Adeptus Mechanicus. So if that's a mystery it would be sort of contradictorial that all power weapons work by the same principle.

Also, according to the rules at least, it is the powerfield that does the real damage. THis question was posted in the dark heresy messageboards where a player wondered if the Moritat assassin would benefit from The Bloody Edge trait whilst using power weapons. The official answer from FFG was no if I remember correctly, because while a power sword might have an edge, it's not the edge that does the damage, but the powerfield surrounding the blade.

With these things in mind, im guessing that power weapons use something... well "simpler" in the way of disruptive power. Something that seems to generate heat because it is listed as energy damage and not rending damage.

On a slight tangent, I imagine most weapons that might cauterise a wound would also boil the target's blood in their veins as they did so, so the risk of post-wound infection or blood loss isn't really that great a concern ;-)

Andy

Varnias Tybalt said:

Agmar_Strick said:

Hehe, nah. Im just trying to extrapolate some thought about the subject, in order to help the OP.

As I said in an earlier post, our group have completely changed the damage for power weapons to fit better with what they do (Rending damage for power swords, impact damage for power fists etc.).

Not really because we actually thought about wounds being cauterized or paying much attention to the heat a powerfield would generate, but rather to fit the critical damage effects better (after all, the power sword is supposed to sever heads and limbs, not setting them on fire).

But for this thread, I've just tried to stick with the rules as written and the "official explanations".

In a matter like this I would personally think that fluff is more important than what the rules say and really wish I could find a fluff example that proves for or against but can't think of anything right now.
The reason I'm saying this is that people keep refering to it's damage being energy based, but have anything ever thought that maybe FFG got it wrong?

Cryxx said:

I can. The description for Power Fist which comes right out of the very book FFG wrote, though to be honest, the text actually comes from the IH which BI wrote as dose the idea of power weapons doing E damage.

Power Fist: "...tear open even the heaviest armour and burst flesh into a shower of blood and tissue."

Power weapons are classed as E damage because it is an energy field which dose the damage and, if something were to come along that was weak against E damage or could only be damaged at all by E damage, it's good to know exactly which weapons would hurt it. The problem here is a lot of folks are slaving themselves to tables consisting of four very limited "damage types" each with a very limited selection of special effects, not the damage type of power weapons.

Hell, just look at the effects bullets tend to do to someone: no matter how many times one gets shot, there's no chance they'll bleed to death, a bullet is more likely to crack a rib then puncture your digestive tract, and, if you shoot a critically wounded target in the head, there's a good chance the bullet will some how tear the head clean off and send it flying off somewhere. I'm not saying that isn't cool as hell, but when it comes to the effects of those tables, more times then not, you have to tailor the narrative effects of the critical to the situation and weapon used and not dogmatically adhere to the funky text as written. Do that, and these problems will disappear.

Impact damage for a power fist makes sense, because the strength boost you get comes from the augmentics. The power feild is just there to help, you can still rip a tank open without it. But becasuse a power sword does a little more of a...refined? shall we say? cut on the target, the enegery field is doing the heavy lifting.

Of course, the energy field is never described in it's workings, but I would imagine it would create a lot of heat. Think about it, when somehting melts, what really happened? The kinetic enegry of the molecules in the object overcame whatever held them together, and they melted away. Remeber that heat is just a measure of the average kinetic energy of an object, and a good way to "disrupt" it would be to heat it up.

I'm not saying that a power sword is an over-glorified foam cutter though, I'm just saying that if it was hot it proboly could do it's job better. Plus I'm assuming the field would generate heat as a byprouduct. It is way in the future, but plasma weapons overheat still, so we havn't quite fixed that problem. Not that it would be a problem, just one more reason not to touch it.

E type damage is fairly broad. Fire, electrical charges, disintegration beams, microwave blasts, and power fields all cause that kind of damage. Power fields break down molecules on contact, weakening and destroying material on contact. This allows the blade to cut through armour or fist to crumple steel. I imagine they would tend to cause massive bruising and hemorrhaging around the wound.

As for lasers, you're lucky if the cauterize the wound. They're quite likely to flash boil the water in the victim's tissue causing the affected flesh to explode (and it does in several 40K novels). The reality of energy weapons is that wounds from them are likely to be pretty messy.

To me it seems to make more sense that a power sword's energy field sortof amplifies the kinetic energy put into a swing. A power sword will cut through things it otherwise couldn't from a normal human application of strength, as will a power axe, while a power maul can use a maximum setting to crush heads like melons because the force accompanying the blow is amplified.

I can't think of many other things that make sense. If it heated things up and that's why it cut through armor, why doesn't the power sword melt? It can cut through even the adamantine plates of Terminator armor so it'd have to be something really amazing, which belies it's somewhat ubiquitous battlefield use.

Graver said:

You know, I've been thinking about the power fist myself. Due to the description of certain effects they cause, im sort of leaning towards making the damage from power fists into Explosive damage rather than impact (which my group use now).

It would certainly fit the picture, and it would make the power fist sort of stand out a little (being pretty much the ONLY melee weapon which doesn't cause energy, Impact or rending damage but actually cause explosive damage which is usually reserved for ranged weapons like bolters, missile launchers, grenade launchers etc.)

Power weapons are classed as E damage because it is an energy field which dose the damage and, if something were to come along that was weak against E damage or could only be damaged at all by E damage, it's good to know exactly which weapons would hurt it. The problem here is a lot of folks are slaving themselves to tables consisting of four very limited "damage types" each with a very limited selection of special effects, not the damage type of power weapons.

Graver said:

Oh my god, why does that remind me terribly much about the latest Rambo movie (the fourth one)? I remember that scene where the guy with the Barret .50 rifle snipes one of the enemy soldiers and hit the soldier in the head. But rather than making the head explode or the bullet just going straight through it actually tears the entire head off and it lands several feet behind the beheaded corpse.

I'll admit that it looked cool as hell (im a big fan of gratuitous violence and gore), but when I saw that I just burst out in laughter. (yes, it is perfectly acceptable to laugh when witnessing a beheading, im perfectly sane ).

I mean... It was cool... But it also looked so incredibly stupid. Sure you need a serious suspension of disbelief when watching any Rambo movie, but at that moment I could just feel the suspension crack of the unrealistic overload.

On a serious note though, I think you could tear someones head off with solid projectile weapons as long as you have either a really high rate of fire and the bullet impacts actually "chew" through the neck of the victim. Or if you have some sort of high calibre weapon but with relatively slow moving bullets that aren't full metal jacketed and they hit the spine ijn a peculiar angle to actually bounce around inside the neck several times and thus severing sinew and muscle to actually lop off the head (though it would be highly unlikely that the head is severed clean off, but i would rather dangle in a few threads of muscle and sinew from the shoulders).

AkumaKorgar said:

Because the energy field is projected to "coil" around the blade rather than actually coming into contact with the blade. Also if they have the technology available to make directed energy coil around a blade of a sword, then chances are that the energy projector is actually able to direct the energy in a specific direction (i.e "away" from the edge of the blade), and thus the energy in question will only affect and shear through things that area micro millimeters in front of the blades edge rather than affecting the blade itself.

Technobabble extravaganza!

Cryxx said:

Ibram Gaunt uses the flat of his Powersword to cauterize Hlaine Larkin's severed foot in "The Armour of Contempt". Abnett fluff .