The only rule that would counter it is on page 140, in the second bullet. It states that thrown weapons cannot be used in close combat unless they are also classified as melee. But I believe this has more to do with things like spears and javelins. I guess there's nothing really preventing you from doing it, although the horde or character could use a reaction to kick the grenade away.

I think Tidomann and I were on the same page about this topic from the end of page one on. Let's be honest a devastator marine should be in an elevated defendable position and be able to support his battle brothers from afar without having too much trouble keeping himself alive.

And as I had mentioned earlier, he had plenty of other options besides the grenade, he could have used his standard issue pistol in melee, while holding the heavy weapon in the other hand. This of course means he could not fire the heavy weapon, but he couldn't have really fired it anyway.

Warhawk X said:

I'm not sure what either of these things has to do with anything.

There are two issues here:

Are marines supposed to be immune to frag grenades? This has implications beyond this one situation. For example, tossing grenades into a horde in melee with someone else.

Is priming and dropping a grenade a ranged attack? Probably not, because it would not use BS. It's not really a melee attack either. In fact, it's not really an attack because there is no to hit roll. Just drawing and using an item, the result of which is damage to everyone within X meters of your space.

I'd probably disallow grenades in melee, but, if you really wanted to allow just priming and dropping a grenade, I'd say you should reduce the Blast value, probably by half, for the bulk of the marine absorbing some of it. If he wanted to chuck it away, that would imply he was stepping out of melee and throwing, giving all his attackers a free attack.

As has been previously said, Quick draw + pistol or combat knife would have been better options. Since Marines have Unarmed Master, a punch would have been fairly effective as well.

I hope this question hasn't been asked here earlier, in my first game of deathwatch my librarian player wanted to use his Smite when in melee combat, I disallowed this as I consider it a range attack (using all bonuses and penalties of a ranged attack), he accepted this and we started discussing wether one could use psychic powers in melee (at least those that do not function as ranged attacks), what do you guys think?

HamHamJ said:

I think you missed the first post i made regarding the pistol and such, the issue is not as simple as "Can I a grenade or not" look at the title of the post. Tidomann wanted to know what other options is devastator marine had, and I suggested the standard issue astartes bolt pistol is a melee weapon.

Perhaps reading the rest of the forum first then asking what any of this has to do with anything might be a good idea in the future. I think people are getting WAY off track with the grenade side story.

Tidomann, post a reply quote here if you feel like the topic really should come back around to "What could have the devastator marine done instead of the grenade priming situation" because as I understand it, you feel this is possibly a game breaking move that he did in the first place and want to avoid that issue happening again without penalty, or happening at all am I right?

Moving forward perhaps we should be discussing the best course of action for a devastator marine in melee instead.

I think players can still discuss the grenade option- although I think I have enough information to make my own decision on it. I think telling the player that he can still pull out his pistol and continue using his BS in close combat could have been a juicy option should he had known it.

Other actions would be great. I think the way I will rule it is that the player must move from the horde and toss the grenade. Even the blast 5 might still catch him if he does a disengage, but it's not like it will hurt him

or just give them beautiful description how his grenade explodes and sharpnel is flying around killing horde that attacked him while at same time its just bounces from his Power armour plates... then damages his heavy weapon ammo feed cables, or other more delicate parts of his equipment.

just my idea.