Page 296, Black Crusade Core Rulebook:

"The character is gifted with the ability to summon forth a stream of unreal matter brewed from the raw stuff of Chaos. The stream is generally projected from the recipient’s mouth, and the exact nature this matter assumes upon leaving the character’s body varies enormously.

The character may make a Standard Attack Half Action to unleash a projectile attack with the following profile; Range: 10m; Rate of Fire: S/-/-; Damage: 1d10+5; Penetration 3; Spray, Smoke. Obviously, the character may not make this attack if he is wearing an enclosed helmet!"

My character picked up Projectile Attack and there seems to be a lot of data missing.

1. What is the attack's "Class"? Does it count as "Basic" or "Pistol" or "Flame"? For example, can it be used in melee? Seems like it should be.

2. What is its "Type"? If a critical hit is scored, which charts do we use?

3. What is its Smoke rating? Smoke(10)? Smoke(5)? Plus Smoke weapons aren't supposedly to do damage, but Projectile Attack clearly does.

IMO it should be resolved similar to psychic powers for most part.

As to the type, maybe it simply doesn't have any. No critical hit effects, no specific AP adjustments either. Or just E like most psychic attacks.

But for more fun, you could take « varies enormousl  y  » as an invitation to make up a specific variant for character flavor and stick with it. So it will be

E: warpflame, lightning, acid/bile, sonic attack;

I: mini-Force Storm, cone of tiny Force Bolts, hail, micro-meteors, wide blunderbuss blast;

R : swarm of talons or fangs, hail of razorblades.

And so on.

Smoke seems weird, maybe it was supposed to be Tainted or something?

11 hours ago, aristodeimos said:

1. What is the attack's "Class"? Does it count as "Basic" or "Pistol" or "Flame"? For example, can it be used in melee? Seems like it should be.

The class only really matters for special rules which reference the class - it's a natural ability with no class listed, so you can assume no weapon training talent is needed (because the penalty is trying to use it without a required talent and there's no required talent if there's no class), and since it's not explicitly heavy, there's no need to brace, and since it's not explicitly pistol, it can't be used in melee.

Yes, all right, breathing fire should work up close, but (a) it depends how much 'working up' to the attack you need - you can't exactly spend 3-4 seconds just huffing and puffing in combat without being stabbed - and (b) "congratulations, the cultist grappling you is now on fire..."

11 hours ago, aristodeimos said:

2. What is its "Type"? If a critical hit is scored, which charts do we use?

Agree with @TBeholder - decide (narratively) what it's an attack of - launched spines, breathed fire, whatever, and pick the best match.

11 hours ago, aristodeimos said:

3. What is its Smoke rating? Smoke(10)? Smoke(5)? Plus Smoke weapons aren't supposedly to do damage, but Projectile Attack clearly does.

I can imagine it's an error but it was never changed in the FAQ. Tainted seems potentially incredibly harsh when a player gets up to a higher corruption rating. I would either ignore it or just consider it smoke 1 (i.e. obscures the heretic but no-one else).

Thanks to you both for taking the time to comment. I think I've got enough to take to the GM and let him tighten it up.

It only has a 10m spray. I think there is an argument to be made that the smoke would fill the complete spray. BTW, guess what also has a 10m spray? The Hand Flamer. Hence I think there is a argument that it could be used in melee. But again...I'll leave that up the GM.

It already got modest range, indeed. Thus opportunities to use it against anything that isn't very slow are very limited and melee range makes sense.

On the other eyestalk, it's stronger than hand flamer, doesn't depend on ammunition and "built in"/concealed, so it's still not useless even without firing in melee.