Clarification for Daemon Engines

By Arseofmars, in Black Crusade Rules Questions

Alright, I got two questions (technically) pertaining to Daemon Engines. Hope you'll all bear with me.

First off, when creating a Daemon Engine, there is no mention as to how Agility is determined. Maybe I'm blind as a bat but I swore I could not find a single reference to it anywhere in the rules in the Tome of Decay. For now I'm assuming that the Daemon Engine's agility is the same as the Daemon being bound to it until otherwise corrected.

With that small question pushed out, here's the bigger one;

So I recently had my player Party confront a Daemon Engine. Initially I thought it would be a piece of cake, but as it turns out (according to the players, whom I'd usually trust to know the rules themselves) the Daemon Engine acts as a living thing. As a result, if it gets stuck into melee it cannot fire it's ranged weapons at all. Which felt really weird to me, because for one thing, they are quite **** big. A good example would be say, we have a player party with all but one in melee with the Daemon Engine. Because Daemon Engines are usually big, it surely would not pose much trouble to simply aim a ranged weapon and fire at the lone guy at the very least?

I tried looking up on the Combat rules to verify, but I did not have much luck. I'm hoping you guys can provide me some answers.

Thanks in advance!

In the Black Crusade im in one of the players ( a later tier heretek ) Used his servo arm to grapple onto its back and 1 turn later forcing it to topple into the lava that the bridge we fought on was above.

It was great

Alright, I got two questions (technically) pertaining to Daemon Engines. Hope you'll all bear with me.

First off, when creating a Daemon Engine, there is no mention as to how Agility is determined. Maybe I'm blind as a bat but I swore I could not find a single reference to it anywhere in the rules in the Tome of Decay. For now I'm assuming that the Daemon Engine's agility is the same as the Daemon being bound to it until otherwise corrected.

That looks to be an oversight, so for the moment I'd suggest doing just what you're already doing.

With that small question pushed out, here's the bigger one;

So I recently had my player Party confront a Daemon Engine. Initially I thought it would be a piece of cake, but as it turns out (according to the players, whom I'd usually trust to know the rules themselves) the Daemon Engine acts as a living thing. As a result, if it gets stuck into melee it cannot fire it's ranged weapons at all. Which felt really weird to me, because for one thing, they are quite **** big. A good example would be say, we have a player party with all but one in melee with the Daemon Engine. Because Daemon Engines are usually big, it surely would not pose much trouble to simply aim a ranged weapon and fire at the lone guy at the very least?

I tried looking up on the Combat rules to verify, but I did not have much luck. I'm hoping you guys can provide me some answers.

Thanks in advance!

That whole business of melee combat locking down ranged combat serves as something of a balance check on the otherwise superior nature of guns in the setting, so I'd be wary of fiddling with it too much except perhaps for ranged weapons with Spray. But that said, keep in mind that a daemon engine has a lot of armor/toughness/Unnatural Toughness through Daemon Engine. If that daemon engine is in melee with a few petty mortals and wants to train its guns on them, what's stopping it from backing up and firing point-blank besides the threat of small blows? (Not all blows are guaranteed to be small, but many will be relative to the daemon engine unless the heretics are gunning for the really good stuff like power fists/force weapons/Necron weapons.)

Edited by NFK

I have a question though when it comes to making demon engines

How long does it take to make one ROUGHLY that is. In my case we are 2 warpsmiths and we have a singe hellforge currently under our thrall and we are in a couple in game days be besiged so how long with the needed skill and materials would it take?

There's no explicit timeframe given for making a daemon engine, so the effective time needed is approximately "as long as makes dramatic sense". I'm sure you can work out something with your GM such that you can make the frame on such a short notice while still increasing tension.

Each weapon fires independently (forget the name of the rule) so unless they are in melee with the individual weapon, it can still shoot.

As for agility, I just used the demons.

Independent Targeting is a talent, but it doesn't have nearly so much effect as that. (Otherwise everyone with a vicious heavy weapon would be gunning for it.) Rather, the talent just increases the spacing between which you can designate distinct targets for multiple attacks. Being "in melee with the individual weapon" is like facing not a thing in the 40K RPGs, and instead you're either in "close combat" (melee) or not.