Maybe I'm blind or just don't remember reading the section, but if a player is currently engaged in an enemy in melee range, does prevent the marine from doing any actions other than melee subgroups? I know a character can disengage, or move/run away from the engagement provoking a standard attack- but is this the only situation? Can a marine who is in contact with an enemy still opt to make a ranged attack against a different target?

Also- thrown weapons cannot be used in melee (except as improvised weapons) unless stated correct? One of my players, the devastator marine, after being swarmed by a horde of cultists decided to prime a grenade in his hands. With his faith in the emporer, he was sure he'd take no damage (which he didn't, since frags have no penetration and he managed to roll low enough on the damage). Now- this may be a little unbalanced because he just simply destroyed the horde around him. Blast 5, + 1d5, +1 for explosive damage, +1 for armor bonus, resulted in him destroying 1 good 12 horde members, without resorting to melee (albeit with a small risk attached).

Is this a legal move? I know grenades use BS to throw and probably wouldn't be allowed in a melee engagement- but it just seemed to epic to pass up on.

Would love to hear some insight from other players.

You cannot make ranged attacks against something else. A flaying tyranid warrior trying to slice your head off would tend to ruin your aim.

While the grenade is kind of interesting story wise, I'd rule against it as being metagamey. He knows he cannot harm himself without rolling RF essentially. I'd let it happen in a 'last stand' kind of situation, but the player would take some auto wounds for doing so. He is holding a grenade in his hand, so maybe d5 Critical damage to the arm.

Also, Unrelenting Devastation only applies to Heavy weapons, so he would not get +d5 with a grenade.

It's not technically legal, as grenades use your BS instead of WS, however. A free action to a grenade at your feet that happened to be primed could work.

I think I would just rule that he would be taking some damage, if only for the proximity of the grenade, but aside from that seems fine. You could always give the mob a chance to parry the grenade away too. So Marine drops the grenade, mob kicks it free to land at another space marine's feet. That sort of thing.

I believe that there may be precedence in that a pistol uses BS but is considered a melee attack.

As for the grenade I would just attach an ap of 5 to it since the blast is centered in his hand as opposed to the ground where it ussually is.

Page 247 on the right hand column states the following rules "Engaged in Melee".

Engaged in melee is summarized as follows "characters that are engaged in melee can only make make attack actions with the melee subtype".

I presume this includes the grenade being a ballistic action as well, but as a GM I'd personally allow a marine to pull the pin on a grenade, however I'd roll a percentile against thier toughness, on a success they take an auto pen hit for a d5 wounds anyway, on a fail they would take a critical wound roll to that hand.

I realize to some that sounds harsh but the fact of the matter is, someone in the kill team did not work with their devastator well, and allowed him to be engaged in melee, that costs the whole team the possible use of the devastators damage. I realize to some that might be penalizing a specific player for the failure of his team-mates but the point of deathwatch is not about the individuals of the kill-team it is about the team itself and working well together is key for success.

Consider that if you let people use grenades in melee as a matter of course, your Assault marines should always just run into melee with a frag in each hand. 12 near guaranteed damage (even if you 'miss' the scatter is probably in the horde) vs a chance at maybe 6-8, if he rolls exceptionally well on both his attacks.

As he advances and gets power weapons, the balance would eventually shift, but 12 mag is quite good for a single round by a non-Devastator.

On pg 140 it specifically mentions that pistols use BS and a shooting attack in melee.

Grenades are very specifically prohibited, unless you use a house rule, as thrown weapons need the melee tag to be used in melee on that page as well.

I would still just attach an AP to the grenade and let it go off.

Thanks for all the good suggestions. It does seem a little overpowered and only used in a last stand situation.

Also- not counting unrelenting devestation as "Heavy weapons, double the magnitude, and blast weapons add 1d5" to only adding the benefits to heavy weapons with the blast quality seems like it makes more sense. I'll have to change my ruling on that.

Keep in mind a Devastator Marine can simply hold the heavy weapon in question without being able to fire and pull out a Bolt Pistol to use in melee without any problems, the same is true for a standard melee weapon.

Additionally I'd like to point out, a devastator marine can melee with their heavy weapon should they choose to. I would imagine a devastator marine whacking a horde with a heavy bolter wouldn't be too shabby of damage all things considered.

There are plenty of options open to a devastator marine aside from the grenade of course when in melee. If you simply inform your player of these options you shouldn't have a repeat incident as long as you inform the player of changes to grenades based on what you decide off the suggestions in the forums here.

They could use their acrobatics to disengage as a half action also, and then throw a grenade, etc. with their remaining half action.

They do stand the risk of the horde getting a free attack on them if they fail the acrobatics though. They always get to do the move as a half action.

I don't see how you could possibly prevent doing this without it being metagamey to a silly extent.

All he has to do is pull out a grenade a it on the ground. This takes maybe two second. There's no way being in melee could realistically prevent you from doing that.

And if he takes no damage, well, that's how Space Marines are built. They can just ignore small arms fire all day long.

If you give it more AP because of "proximity" or whatever, expect the player's to demand the same bonus later on, making called shots with grenades and what not.

Tidomann said:

"I detonate a fireball at my own feet" is as a RPG tactic as old as the Pyramids. I have run across this "tactic" in every possible system that uses hand grenades ( or equivalent ).

My own suggestion for a house rule for situations like this are: 1) the player must succeed in some form of morale test ( because this IS an insane "final stand" choice ), 2) the grenade does automatically MAXIMUM damage to the wielder ( he is holding it for feth sake! ), 3) if the system has a "critical hit/damage" option, use it ( Righteous Fury in the case of DH/RT/DW ). Maybe even automatically applying a suitable critical damage result to relevant body part ( loss of hand is obvious ).

Aajav-Khan said:

See, the thing is that a frag grenade doing maximum damage does...0-2 damage to a marine. They are frigging tough. Which is why I'd apply auto Critical Damage for that action.

OK, getting a little weird, but there is really no reason they can't it at their own feet (no reason they have to hold it in their hand).

Also, no reason they can't dodge the attack (assuming their AB is high enough to let them get out of range).

Or have a buddy throw a grenade in a place where you do have enough AB to get out of range with a dodge.

Or maybe more epic yet, shove the grenade down the mouth of your enemy. Succeed or fail on getting it in their mouth it's still exploding.

I would say cause max damage to the arm, which remember, is ap 8, not 10, so the average total reduction is 16, meaning max from frag is 4 wounds.

Its not much, but it will certainly add up if they keep doing it.

Also, unless players are spending req on grenades, they still only have 3 per mission. Unless they're that worried, this still means they can only do this cheap tactic 3 times. If anything, I would say it would be far more epic to punch an enemy with a krak grenade. Excellent way to do a final stand.

I would let them do it in my campaign but it would be considered a disgraceful tactic, it's not what they have been taught, not in accordance with the codex astartes (same with throwing two grenades at once) and as such might incur renown penaltty as per GM's discretion. Unusual circumstances might warrant resorting to unusual tactics though.

Alex

Some pretty good suggestions. I think that the grenade dealing max damage (2 damage to the space marine), gaining a fatigue (this might be better than fatigue), having to pass a toughness test or be knocked prone, and possibly a reduction in total mission renown might make it fine.

Tidomann said:

If you want to discourage these types of actions in the future i'd recommend something much more severe. Unless you are fine with a devastator marine getting away with some questionable tactics later on in other missions.

Also how are you doing first aid checks in your campaign, I know there is a huge list of people who don't understand the medicae skill within reason, so they make something up.

If you are doing the actual wording you can only have a wound healed once per mission. Meaning your marine takes 2 from his grenade, he gets that healed with the medicae skill from an apothecary, and later receives numerous wounds from other encounters. He cannot heal back that 2 damage he took from the grenade until the mission is over or with extended care. So over the course of a mission your marines have roughly double thier wounds in total health they can be healed.

I've seen some posts for medicae errata in rogue trader that also makes sense, but if healing within your missions is fairly easy for normal wounds perhaps auto critical wounding your devastator marine might be the better option.

Very good point. That's pretty much how I'm running medicae. Each wounding attack can be treated once. Once treated, any untreated wounds become permanent until the end of the mission. Thus- critical damage from the grenade does make better sense.

Actually the example I gave was the post about each of your total wounds can only be healed once during the mission.

Example my Storm Warden Tactical Marine has 22 wounds. He receives 12 damage during an engagement. An apoth is allowed to then heal him for those 12 wounds, but during the rest of the mission he can only heal the other 10 wounds, meaning overall 44 wounds kills a marine, because he has 22 wounds total and can regain each wound once.

That was the interpretation i was using. I do however LOVE the system your using out of all of the ones posted. I have my first session tonight and I have to get a group vote on how wounds should work, your system was the one I was hoping would be the one that won the vote honestly.

As you said your using that method, so if I were in your group I would agree with dealing a crit wound instead, additionally I'd like to point out a lot of people were trying to circumvent that rule by saying the guy dropped the grenade.

In that case I'd move the crit over to the leg or make it a static percentage roll that he takes the crit to the leg instead because he is no longer holding the grenade. The fact that the marine is taking a huge risk should not be circumvented by if the grenade is in his hand or near his feet. This prevents players in the future from taking low risk high reward actions all the time in the future.

Additionally a marine deliberately attempting to kill his enemies and wound himself effects the whole team, and is not a decision any one member should be making in the first place.

I know I sound like a hard ass but really I am the 100% team player, and have issues when one player dictates a group through brute force or subtlety either one kinda ruins RPG's for me, so I'm looking at this from the Kill-Teams overall perspective, as well as a GM.

Honestly? I would just tell the player to drop the grenade at his feet.

That way he still gets his armor and toughness bonus as he usually would against any other thrown projectile.

Now, if he SERIOUSLY wanted to hold onto that grenade and let it go off in his clenched fist, then I would invoke the rules used for Overheating without the option to "drop" the offending weapon.

It's simple, slick, and uses the current rules as represented.

EDIT:

As far is this not being a "team player" move, well it could be argued that the reason he's in that situation in the first place is because the team didn't back him up properly. If he were trying to use the grenade as a "Last Stand" move, then I'd follow the rules for Heroic Sacrifice, and move on from there.

Your health system seems to be pretty effective too. I'll let you know how the mission goes using my system.

I just wanted to clarify that the renown penalty would be to the grenade player only- rather than the entire kill team.

I used the simple rules of "jamming" for the grenades as they were intended, and it never really occured. The devestator simply popped his grenades around him until he ran out. I guess it's one easy way of burning through a squads pool of grenade but otherwise, I still feel like it should never really happen, or happen without consequence.

SpawnoChaos said:

Sometimes on the battlefield plans break down - who is to say that if he had been a better shot all of his backup wouldn't be in melee with a horde, and maybe that's why they didn't back him up?

All I'm trying to say is there are too many variables in the situation and picking a person to blame may not be possible.

Overal I agree with your thinking though, I don't see the 5 damage to the horde being so significant as to be game breaking. Though I do like Alex's suggestion of reduced renown if the tactic isn't used with good reason. Ultimately if the PCs take it to the extreme and start playing out of character, you can toss in XP penalties. Marines aren't suicidal, and shouldn't act that way.

Charmander said:

I totally agree with a Renown Penalty.

Warhawk X said:

I hope you're prepared for your players getting auto-crits on tough enemies by dropping frag grenades at their feet.

Seriously, the suggests so far have been incredibly silly. Reknown penalty? That makes absolutely no sense.

The problem here, even if there is a problem, is that the system does not track armor damage. So either you need to implement some increasingly complex system to model armor being worn down from repeated hits, even if they don't do damage; or you just need to accept the fact that Space Marines are practically immune to damage from frag grenades and that using them while they are themselves danger close makes perfect sense.