I was looking at the Power Fist and I noticed it still has the unwieldy trait while a weapon of the same design such as lightning claw doesn't .

It's not the size, a lightning claw is bigger as well as weigthing more then a powerfist so why is that ? I always assumed it was like this in DH and RT for design, lack of powerarmor or whatnot but for an Astartes in MK VII powerarmor ? that doesn't make sense.

Also we have at last one fluff entry, that I know off, in which a powerfist was used to block the Avatar's sword. Sure the Gauntlets of Ultramar are not exactly normal powerfists but the design is still the same.

For the most part the Power fist has very poor articulation compared to the more nimble lightning claws.

not really, the basic structure is the same, the clasw have an exctra section on top from where the claws are located.

It's REALLY hard not to be able to parry or block something with this HUGE baby

Unbalanced, sure, but unwieldy no, hell no. It's almost as big as a shield AND it's covered in a powerfield.. what better protection heh

I think its a throwback to TT, with how power fists are last in initative order, while LCs are not, but also do not double strength.

Lucius Valerius said:

Is that MKVIII Power Armour? Also where's the picture from?

Lucius Valerius said:

not really, the basic structure is the same, the clasw have an exctra section on top from where the claws are located.

It's REALLY hard not to be able to parry or block something with this HUGE baby

Unbalanced, sure, but unwieldy no, hell no. It's almost as big as a shield AND it's covered in a powerfield.. what better protection heh

ok with you, will be unbalanced not unwieldy in my games and just for example does marneus calgar never parry any attack?

Manyfist said: Published on 9/26/2010 - 04:32:32

Is that MKVIII Power Armour? Also where's the picture from?

I think it's from the Ultramarines movie, maybe you can find it on a related website.

Concept render for Dark Millennium online, actually.

I was checking for fun how much weight as astartes in power armor could carry and looking at the table he can easily carry 2.2 tons without truble. Now to give that number a prospective in the real world that's 2 Mini Cooper folks

Now tell me the powerfist i s too eavy to operate in his 30 or so kg

It's that way for balance reason, obviously.

Power Fists are disgustingly powerful melee weapon, only surpassed by the more disgustingly powerful Thunder Hammer (arguable, I suppose) and Chain Fist.

It HAS to have some kind of weakness. A weakness that can be easily avoided by dual wielding another weapon (like say, a balanced sword) and blocking with it instead... or by keeping your agility/dodge high and dodging instead.

So yeah, IMO, removing unwieldy wouldn't be much of a big deal - but it still need some kind of balancing factor (TBH, unwieldy was a poor balancing factor to begin with).

Tarkand said:

As I said, I whould have agreed on an unbalanced as a penality for using such a powerfull weapon but unwieldy it's just a legacy of DH/RT. When the manual has been build I'm guessing a certain ammount of copy/paste was involved (the GM screen for example give DH/RT crafting quality for weapons instead of DW). Take the chainfirst for example. Same thing as the powerfist but it clearly says it can only be used in terminator armor and in fact lack the unwieldy. No ine to mention that is present in the powerfist. Vanilla a powerfist even on a terminator whould be "too encumbersome" to be used to parry. The same argument apply to the thunderhammer as well. Then we have a weapon that it's really complicated to handle one handed like the Omnissian Axe that it's just unbalanced...

Let's face it, this weapons are going to make a difference only in boss fights. Agaist horde a knife is good enough, but on bosses they really shine. And usually this guys have more then enough power to handle the PC.

Don't get me wrong, I love DW, been waiting to play an astartes since DH.

How about you just take a book from the tabletop and make powerfist/chainfist/thunderhammer all lower initiative? Either to flat out 1 (so like in the TT, people with those weapon always strike last) or by a massive amount (like -10) but that someone with a high agi and init boosting talent may still be able to compensate?

Seems reasonable to me... and considering how easy Unwieldy is to get around (Especially since all Marines are ambidextrous), it seems like a bigger flaw.

Oh, and it won't only matter against Bosses (Master), it's also very effective against all the Elites (A Chaos Space Marines for example, will definitly feel a power fist attack while a Combat Knife would barely scratch him).

Artemesia said:

It's older then that, actually. It was up on the first rendition of the Space Marines video game. From what I hear, though, you're still partially correct as some bits of the game engine are being implemented and used in the MMO development.

-=Brother Praetus=-

Tarkand said:

Tarkand said:

I know too well how painful is to field powerfists in TT... I think I'll go like this:

Powerfists unbalanced in power armor, lose unbalanced in termi.

Thunderhammer keep unwieldy in power armor, lose it in termi.

Omnissian axe unwieldy. (tecnos have the extra arm to compensate anyway)

Tarkand said:

Sure but this guys, like the PCs, have multiple attacks and a low to mid lvl marine can only dodge/parry a couple of them.

I personaly hope that Powerfist being Unwieldly was just bug, and some future errata will clear that matter. its powerfull weapon but its also usless withouth even lame (read: unbalanced) form of parry.

ofc u may take some balanced weapon to other hand, but u lose req points for one and for two u lose any ability to shot.

When my players noticed "unwieldly" on PF nobody ever used it, shame as PF is one of more "portrait" space marine weapons.

For my games i degraded unwieldly to unbalanced with added -4 initiative penalty. (unbalanced is removed in Terminator Armour to make it closer to chainfist)

for my games it helped.

boruta666 said:

How do you justify the penalty to initiative? Afterall, while it only determines strike order in the tabletop, it determines the order in which you do everything... so how does using a melee weapon slow down your reaction times when it comes to moving or shooting?

An alternative might be to borrow the Slow weapon quality from WFRP2 - enemies gain a +10 bonus to dodge and parry the weapon, due to its awkwardness.

^ borrowing Slow from WHFRP2 is much better idea for PF than penalty to initiative. thank u sir

N0-1_H3r3 said:

Me likey! I'd about completely forgotten about that quality from WFRP. Probably would do it Slow and Unbalanced in that case. It's also not too unreasonable to use Slow given there are Fast weapons in the IHB .

-=Brother Praetus=-

and for the eviscerator???

i suppose....in space marine hand it's just a two handed chainsword....and i remove the unwieldy....

hellboy never had any problems

Just requisition a combat shield (which is strapped to the arm and doesn't take up a hand), and there you go problem solved. Even better than being unbalanced with a power fist or slowed quality.