Now I know this relates to the Moritat from Dark Heresy but as it was a Hord related question I felt it more suited to the Deathwatch forum.

In our current Ascended campaign I have a PC who is playing a Moritat, now due to the size of the group I have started using hords to keep things challenging for them in combat, but this raises the question - How does the reaping (attack everyone in contact once unless parried) work against the generalised mass of a hord?

Any thoughts people?

Surak

I would treat it as the Whirlwind of Death talent

Surak said:

The nearest equivalent ability I can find in Deathwatch is Thunder Charge, which basically inflicts an unarmed attack against anyone in the Marine's way as he charges. Against Hordes, that translates to 1d5+1 unarmed attacks. I'd personally do the same with The Reaping against Hordes - it's a decent number of attacks, and allows a lot of potential hits.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

I saw that too, of course with the reaping it's with your blade and not unarmed.

I would still count it as whirlwind of Death and simply double the amount of magnitude damage done.
The description of Whirlwind of Death pretty much fits the reaping...

Another vote for using it as an equivalent of Whirlwind of Death.

Santiago said:

I looked at it, and I disagree; Whirlwind of Death is really more of a modifier applied to existing abilities in combat; it isn't a distinct attack, so much as an improvement to the attacks you already have, while The Reaping is very definitely a distinct way of attacking.

It also doesn't make too much sense. Whirlwind of Death doubles close combat horde damage which depends on the number of attacks. How many attacks does The Reaping grant? As many as there are enemies around you.... right.

perhaps make it an aspect of magnitude? 1 hit per 10 pts of magnitude?

How about this for an idea;

• When using the Reaping against a Horde, the Moritat inflicts one additional point of damage against the Hordes Magnitude per every two Degrees of Success on the Attack roll.

Just like the Space Marines. Or, one could decide to allow an extra point of damage to Magnitude per Degree of Success. But I think giving it the same functionality that the Space Marines benefit from in melee with a Horde would probably be fine.

-=Brother Praetus=-

Or make it:

The Reaping:
Instead of inflicting 1 extra magnitude damage per DoS she inflict 1 extra hit per Dos

Santiago said:

That would be more in line with the Talent; true, but might cause some bog-down having to make lots of damage rolls and such to determine if each hit was sufficient to inflict MagDam (tm pending). Of course, several of the people I play Dark Heresy with are all about the " let's roll some dice and kill $#!+ " mentality. Which is fine since they aren't actually disruptive about it.

-=Brother Praetus=-