Evening everyone,

I am playing an Iron Hand Techmarine. In our campaign I have an exceptional servo-arm. I have 3 questions:

1. When used as a weapon (IE to hit people), does it gain the bonuses a normal exceptional weapon would get (IE +5 WS and +1 damage)? There is some decision among my group that because it is
a) listed in the cybernetics section, not a weapons section and
b) is never explicitly called out as a weapon except for as an aside in 2 of the paragraphs describing it (it has no table weapon representation like everything else)
that it would not get this bonus.

2. Assuming 1 is correct, would you still gain the benefits from it going up in strength? There is an argument that it is a tool, meant to lift or crush things, thus one should have to choose either weapon bonus or cybernetics bonus. Obviously the default description cites a damage increase, but would that still apply with the exceptional bonus (stacking)?

3. In the case that 1 and 2 are true, and referencing artificer bionics in First Founding: the servo-arm get a +10 strength correct? Would this in any way affect the weapon exceptional (or mastercraft) bonuses? My inclination is yes to cybernetic bonuses, but not to weapon bonuses.

Also if there is another game in this system, a post from a FFG admin, or some other source that proves these true this would be valuable. Opinions, interpretations, and similar instances are good - but there is a pretty staunch argument against it getting 'too many bonuses'

EDIT: Is a servo-arm considered a primitive weapon?

Here is my understanding of RaW:

1. I think no, because cybernetics have their own table 5-21 (p.178) for craftsmanship effects.

3. Artificer bionics don't give +10 to Strength Characteristic. It "increases the bonus the bionic component provides by +10", the same way how bonus to test is given from skill advancement. With "Tech-Use +20" you roll your Int+20 (with modifiers for test's difficulty), but your Intellect Characteristic remains unchanged.

So, Artificer Exceptional Servo-Arm will have Str 85 with Unnatural Str (x2) and will:

- give Str Bonus 16 for carrying/lifting/pusing and damage calculation;

- add 2 DoS during opposed tests (e.g. Grapple test);

- reduce by 1 step difficulty of unopposed tests (e.g. tests for overweight lifting), to a maximum of +30;

- add additional +10 to Grapple tests, summing up with +10 to Grapple from Exceptional quality for final +20; (yep, better don't try to grapple with IH techmarine)

4. Profile for Servo-Arm damage doesn't include Primitive quality.