Hi there!

Thinking of things and others, my mind wondered about the varied possibilities offered to turn your opponent into pink mist in D.H. Among them, psychic powers. Some of these allow you to inflict 1d10+[modifier] damage to a target, without testing for a hit since the psyker already tests focusing power. Can this damage trigger Righteous Fury? If yes, what do you test as a hit test? Willpower? As an extra, what of Force Barrage?

As per the RAW:

"Normally, when you hit with an ATTACK, the resulting damage includes rolling one or more d10s..." and later "This calls for a SECOND ATTACK roll..." Emphasis mine.

So, Psychic Powers are out. They are simply not Attacks: they do not test WS or BS, and you can even manifest a Half-Action Power and then shoot a fool in the same round because it isn't an attack action. The Manifesting is the "action" and the aiming or firing of the power goes along with it. Besides you can't make a second Attack roll if you never made one to begin with. Most powers like this say "make a Willpower test to hit your opponent," this isn't an attack roll.

Exceptions that come to mind are Psychic Blade, Hammerhand and Burning Fist, because with these you make attacks as normal (Psychic Blade tests WP but says it is an attack in every other way) they are simply augmented by powers, so they would allow Righteous Fury. Notice in this case Psychic Blade specifically tells you to treat it like a sword except test Willpower to hit. Other powers do not say "treat this as a [Gun, Ranged Attack, etc]."

So it seems pretty clear to me that Psychic Powers in general cannot activate Righteous Fury as they are not, in fact, Attacks. And for goodness sake stop trying to munchkin Force Barrage more, it's already the most overwhelming direct damage power than DH level psykers have.

At Last Forgot said:

I thought manifesting a power counted as an attack towards the limitation of only one action of a kind per round. No?

Agenor, I'm interested in where you're getting that. I rechecked the rules and I didn't see that under either the Psychic Powers section for the Focus Power roll, nor is it classified as an attack action in the Playing the Game section (it is a miscellaneous action).

At Last Forgot said:

It's in the errata.

Ah, well there you go, I'm not as conversant with the errata.

And... having read it, it takes a few of the points in my argument to pieces. According to the errata it is the "Psychic equivalent of a Standard Attack Action."

That makes most of my previous points invalid. I personally wouldn't allow Righteous Fury on Powers but I don't see where it is prohibited now, except that there still are no "attack rolls" per se in the Manifest action.

At Last Forgot said:

The action is equivalent. Not what you are doing, "ATTACKING" htink you are still correct. I believe the errata applies mainly to nt letting you perform the previously noted : I force barrage you to tiny giblets, then shoot them with my shot gun for giggles.

In any case however.... one must wonder WHY righteous fury is needed with damaging psyker powers... unless you are sub par and throwing fire bolts around, your target is already dead.

Assuming on par is being average, that leaves half of psychers subpar. The question isn't why. I might need to strike at something very resilient, a door, a rock. The question still stands. Since manifesting a psychic power counts as the attack action for a given round, does the psycher get a righteous fury with say bio-lightning? I think a willpower roll would be adequate, akin to the rules on hitting an immobile target on this regard. What say you? Anyhow, I see the validity of both sides. I know that the "critical hit" aspect of powers is already covered by overbleed but it doesn't quite satisfy me, it doesn't have the same taste; I've been playing warhammer for ages now and it always bothered me when a dice rolled max damage not having the player reroll hit then damage is successful. Maybe because my first attack roll of my first fight in my first R.P.G. session included three 6's in row but that's another story.

All this ranting for: What does the R.A.W. say? Yes - obviously not? No - same? Silent yes? Silent no? Silent nothing?

Okay, I've read everything again. I'm gonna have to go with my initial reasoning. Even though a Focus Power roll is "the equivalent of a Standard Attack Action" it remains a non-attack. This is not specifically mentioned, but as it is not an attack action but a miscellaneous action it seems to be a silent denial of the use. It also says "testing Weapon Skill or Ballistic Skill as if you had just made a second attack" which doesn't apply to Powers.

On a personal aside, Psychic Powers are entirely powerful enough without Righteous Fury rolls. Psykers are already at the top of the damage tree in most instances/levels of Dark Heresy when maxxed out. A rank 5 Psyker can have a WP of 7, throwing 7 1d10+7 Force Bolts when using Barrage... more damage than pretty much anything with the possible exception of a truly spectacular Full Auto Burst. But way beyond damage, Psykers have a range of abilities so far beyond every other character... the last thing they need is Righteous Fury.

What about flamers ?

Although they do not roll BS, flamers are a ranged weapon and are a Ranged Attack Action with the one peculiarity of their requiring Agility tests instead of a BS roll. This is opposed to a Focus Power action.

At Last Forgot said:

So what test do you use to confirm Righteous Fury for a flamer ?

You are looking at multiple targets, with different agility values, all being hit by the same burst. Since the damage roll is also the test for a weapon jam it means that all targets take the same damage* if they fail their agility test.

*If you rolled damage for each target individually it would cause a nonsensical effect: The more targets you hit with the flamer, the greater the chance that the flamer jams.

Bilateralrope said:

I'd have the targets test Agility again. A second failure indicating an increased level of char being applied to them; confirming the Righteous Fury. Don't know if that's technically the official method, but makes sense to me.

-=Brother Praetus=-

Brother Praetus said:

This is exactly how our group handles flamers.

As for psy powers, we haven't actually had an attacking power crit yet, as most of the groups powers have been utility or a method of indirect attack like fear. I imagine we'll work out exactly how we'll handle it when it comes up.

For Flamers, I can see where you could have them roll a BS test for Righteous Fury instead of all those agility rolls. I don't see anything in the rules where it says either way, so since it is the blessing of the Emperor on the character using the flamer, a BS would put it in their hands. If you go strictly by RAW which says "Testing Weapon Skill or Ballistic Skill" then that's what you would use.

I could also see where the ruling could be that Flamers don't get Righteous Fury since the user doesn't even roll for the initial hit. Until the errata clarified that the penalty becomes a bonus to the targets agility, I wondered what the point was of taking a Heavy, Basic, or Pistol training in Flamer if you don't even have to roll to use one. At least that cleared that up. But since you don't roll the initial BS to hit, you could say Flamers don't get Righteous Fury. Which would also apply to Psychic powers as well.

I can see it either way without a rules clarification from someone inside. Who wants to volunteer to send in the question?

Redeucer said:

The question is on the way. We'll see what they say.

At Last Forgot said:

You know you can play the Force barrage killing spree mini game at rank 3-4 right? Why wait to 5 when you can start pwnage at 3?

Agénor said:

I was going to type something about psykers and subpar. but I dont want to incite flame wars today LOL

As to WHY... Well I can think of 1 major reason, that reason is psykers have 'unlimited ammo'... If you wanted to brute force a problem, you could emp fury your way through any physical obstacle given time.

you cant really do it with regular weapons, since guns run out of bullets, and GMs typically say your chain / power weapon breaks before your saw through a mountain.

However with Psyker powers, you could tunnel your way through the himalayas (if the Empra hadnt leveled them) with a spell like Fire bolt.

So I can think of a major 'WHY' reason to not let them have emps fury, even if My rules interpretation was wrong about attacks above.

Think adamantine warhammer in dnd 3e ... why cast knock or pick locks when you can play DigDug and do it MUCH faster.

Well, here is Mack's answer, at least in regards to Flamers ...

Hi Sister Cat,

The rules are, unfortunately, a bit unclear on this topic. I have
simply had players confirm with a Ballistic Skill test as if he were
using a standard weapon. While flamers do not need to be aimed they
could benefit from a steady hand guiding them along a targets path.

Flame weapons should be able to righteous fury like normal weapons.
Hopefully this helps!

Mack Martin
Associate RPG Producer

Thanks, Mack! I think this is right along the lines of what some of us were thinking.

Sister Cat said:

That's kind of the way I would do it. That can potentially be a lot of dice-rolling whether the player is testing BS, or the GM is testing Agility again. If the area is rich with targets, then it might take some time.

-=Brother Praetus=-

True. That could lead to a lot of dice-rolling. But if you are getting that many '10's on your rolls, you probably need to keep your dice out of the microwave.

@Brother Praetus. *sighs* This doesn't seem to work either, not for the original post, in any case. It was worth a try though. Thanks.

Sister Cat said:

Well, except I can't see rolling damage more than once for a Flame weapon attack. That can give a lot of chances to roll 9's, which means more chances to Jam. I think one chance per attack is plenty fine there.

On that other matter, it was worth a shot.

-=Brother Praetus=-

At Last Forgot said: