I'm new to the game. I'm putting together a Rogue trader for a new campaign.

The character will have a fairly high weapon skill. I'm thinking of grabbing a best quality chain sword for my single item requisition. Then I'd grab ambidexterity (available as a first rank rogue trader) and use (at least for lightly armored targets) my chain sword to attack (and get the +10% for best quality) and the power sword for parrying (and get +15% for the Moridin pattern power sword). Now I'm thinking about this mostly from a style perspective (chain swords are fun) but how important is that +10% from best quality? Is the improved penetration of the power sword and ability to break any non-power weapons that parry it such a big deal that I'll rarely not be sacrificing power for style when I use the two weapons instead of just the power sword?

In pure math-hammer terms, the Power Sword is better than the chain sword. Higher pen, and arguably stronger critical effects. Chain sword has an advantage with tearing, allowing you to potentially righteous fury more often. Really, it does come down to a question of style. You're a Rogue Trader; if it comes to it, you can simply order dozens of soldiers in to do the fighting for you. If you're the type to want to get stuck in with a chainsword, then do that and hope your GM gifts you a better one down the line.

So as to my specific question, the 10% bonus for best quality will not be sufficient to compensate for the general inferiority of the base weapon and I'd almost always be sacrificing power for style.

Compared to a similar +10% for a Best-Quality power sword, yes, but Tearing really isn't to be discounted. I'd recommend not thinking in that vein though, a situation should rarely come down to your sole ability to do a little bit more damage.

If the choice is between a Best Quality Chainsword vs common-quality Power Sword, its really not much of a difference. In terms of raw power, the Power sword has 2 more in damage (since the BQ adds +1 damage to the chainsword) and 3 more in armor penetration, plus the power field effect. Against this, the Chain Sword has +10% to hit and to Parry (since you should parry anything except Power weapons with this) and the tearing quality.

In essence, you are trading 2 damage and 3 armor pen for the ability to cause Righteous Fury twice as often, and a significant bonus on most of your attacks (which also helps you confirm RF)...I would say its pretty even, although I would personally favor the Chain Sword I think, just cause its cool as hell.

In the long term, a good or BQ power sword would widen that gap somewhat...possibly too much so.

But if your GM is even remotely reasonable, and you're really enjoying the style of a chainsword, it wouldn't be hard to justify upgrading your Chain Sword. Perhaps your Explorator has recovered some hyper accelerators for the chain sword, improving damage or penetration. Or you've recovered some Archeotech items that let you weave a low power field through the weapon, enough to make it immune to the weapon shattering effect of other power weapon. The options are pretty much only limited by your imagination, and there is no balance reason NOT to let you make such changes with a bit of in-game effort, since power weapons already exist. Ultimately, your GM just needs to decide what Tearing is worth in the balance equation and go with that.

When I was running a Rogue Trader game, I implemented two house rules to try and keep chainswords comparable to power swords:

- Allow the Lathe Blade upgrade on them (+1 damage, + 1 pen on top of BQ).

- Use the DH tearing rules*. If a weapon had tearing, it also applied to the extra dice. So when a tearing weapon got RF they rolled two more d10s, discarding the lowest.

With those, a BQ chainsword would outdamage a BQ power sword against unarmoured foes, but as AP went up the power sword dealt more damage. If the chain weapon was upgraded to be sanctified (IH pg 190) then you also have a really potent anti-daemon weapon (Sanctified Weapon isn't a valid upgrade for power weapons, though some do come sanctified without it).

*Each 10 only adds another d10 to the damage, not the full weapon damage.

I also calculated that you can get a BQ chain sword with the Lathe Blade and Sanctified Weapon mods from the free acquisition:

- BQ chainsword is +10 (+10 for average rarity, -30 for BQ, +30 for scale modifier)

- Lathe Blade and Sanctified Weapon are both +10 (-20 for very rare, +30 for scale)

Since this is an acquisition of multiple items, you take the worst modifier and add -5 for each item beyond the first, bringing you to a total of +0. Though I know that there are some people with different interpretations of how the combining acquisition rule works when you add quality into the mix*, so your gm might not not allow this.

*The only defence I give my interpretation is that it works with my spreadsheet for calculating PF modifiers, while the other interpretations do not.

From the answers I'm getting I think I've failed to convey my question clearly. It isin' a question of PS or BQ chain sword.

Its a question of

1.Wielding both the common quality power sword and the best quality chain sword, using the power sword to parry and the chain sword to attack lightly armored opponents or power sword to attack targets where I really need the penetration. (and looking cool)

or

2. Just using the common quality power sword because darn near everything has enough armor that the +10% on the attack roll from best quality is almost always less valuable than the additional penetration. (which may be less cool but I would have both the cost of ambidexterity and my starting acquisition to use in differently cool ways)

Bilateralrope said:

what does sanctified weapon do? (I'm new to the game, I've only ever perused the core book). Are lathe and sanctified from a Dark Heresy book?

Tyrrell said:

Sanctified weapons deal holy damage, which ignores the extra toughness bonus that daemons get through the daemonic trait. Both it an the Lathe Blade are from Inquisitors Handbook.

Also, the reason everyone is comparing the chainsword to a best quality power sword is because BQ gear is very easy to acquire for PCs. You only need to think about getting lower quality equipment when you are buying enough of it to equip an army or two.

Look at the energy and rending critical charts. Notice how energy weapons (such as a power sword) can cause the enemy to explode and/or catch fire (not a good thing when you are in melee with him). Chain Weapons do not. After one battle one of my players told me that most of his damage came, not from the enemies shooting him, but from friendly redshirts* exploding as they were killed.

*The ship was called the Crimson Carnation, so the uniforms were red.

All right, to directly answer your question:

I would pick Option no. 1. Here are the reasons:

1.) You think its cooler (so do I).

2.) Dual wielding a power and a chain blade lets you get literally the best of both worlds. In the rules, there are no restrictions on what weapon you choose to Parry with and which ones you choose to attack with. The only time it will matter is that if you use Swift Attack + dual wield, at least one of your attacks must come from the "off" hand. But the Ambidexterity talent allows you to choose which hand you designate as the "off" hand. And there are no rules specifying which weapon you MUST parry with...that's entirely up to you.

3.) Unless your GM is a ******, he'll let you "power up" your chain sword through game play. Which means the gap between chain and power shouldn't be as outrageous.

4.) Take a look at the Sure Strike and Precise Strike talents. Later on the line, this would give you a lot of freedom in picking which part of the target you attack...which means you can go for those sections that are either unarmored or lightly armored with your meat ripping chainsword. Unless your GM clothes all his NPCs in full body armor 100% of the time, there will be plenty of chances for you to really maximize your damage by playing smart. Sure it will be situational, but giving yourself options and opportunities is never a bad thing.

Hope that answered your question more to your satisfaction =).

Oh, but if you went with Option 2 you could switch out the chain sword with a bolt pistol, giving you some ranged firepower while still maintaining a significant melee threat.

I guess it depends on what combat style you favor. For a melee heavy character, I think Option 1 is best.

Rogue Trader is also a game about style, figure out what the style of your character is, whirling chainsaw death, or the elagance of a powerblade...otherwise just use the double edged Chain Sword, does 1d10+5, Pen 2, Balanced, Tearing but is especially fun at critical failures....

Bilateralrope said:

The scale modifier is applied only to the final item, not to every component. The example in the book makes this very clear.

Kalec Fash said:

The combining acquisition example (bottom of page 271) doesn't make any mention of scale. But where the scale modifier is applied doesn't change the end result* and putting the scale modifier last does simplify calculations. So your interpretation is the better one.

The point people argued over was if you added the craftsmanship and rarity modifiers for each component and took the worst single component (the way I did it), or if you took the rarity of the rarest component and the craftsmanship of the highest quality component (which would give this chainsword a total acquisition modifier of -30).

*Unless you can think of a situation where individual components have different scale modifiers.

Bladehate said:

I may be missing something.

I don't see that best quality givs a bonus to parry (not per the rules on page 115). So seeing as both the power sword and the chain sword have the balanced quality, the power sword parries better because of the addition 5% bonus specific to the Mordian pattern power sword.

That's correct. The craftsmanship bonus for melee weapons only applies to attacks made with the weapon, not to Parry attempts or any other assorted uses of WS (which are few).

True. My players pulled a fast one on me with this one =P.

But its a house rule I can live with so I don't think I'll change it.