I've just reread the charge action, the Wrathful Descent ability and the Preternatural Speed and Lightning Attack talents a few times, and interpret it really RAW.

From Charge: " The character rushes at his target and delivers a single melee attack. "

From Preternatural Speed: " In addition, the character may use the Swift Attack and Lightning Attack Talents during a Charge. "

From Lightning Attack: " As a Full Action, the character may make three melee attacks on his turn. "

From Wrathful Descent: " When making a Charge against a Horde, the Assault Marine may inflict an additional 1d10 damage to the Horde’s Magnitude after a successful melee attack. "

All of this would mean, during a charge you can use Lightning Attack due to Preternatural Attack for 3 (or 4, if you count the offhand weapon) attacks which all, by the wording, count as a "melee attack" - which is what triggers the +1d10 magnitude damage during a charge. So you can see the dilemma.

I've seen others on the forum count it as just the one +1d10 after the whole charge action has been processed, no matter how many melee attacks you get during the charge - which, to be frank, is the most "non-broken" way to look at it - but it's not really by the wording of the rules.

Another case of badly written rules, or just the most efficient (and broken) horde killer ever? Add in Whirlwind of Death by the way.

Edit: Oh, and I just remembered Thunder Charge. You get 1d5+1 unarmed melee attacks from that one during a charge. I'd assume Wrathful Descent technically should work on that too? Just seems strange, but oh well. I guess that 100+ magnitude horde just died.

BrotharTearer said:

Wrathful Descent: I interpret that as 'after A successful melee attack' and only give them +1d10 mag damage total. It doesn't say after each melee attack, is says after A melee attack. Seeing that in 9/10 cases a charge results in a single attack, I feel the intent was to do a total of an additional +1d10 to the horde. This also seems to hold true given the explicit descriptions of multiple hits, etc.

Preternatural Speed and Lighting Attack I would say allow you 3 attacks on a charged enemy, as you are taking a half action to charge, and your other half action is spent doing lightning attack. Attacking with the second weapon is part of the full round multiple attack action where you can apply lightning attack to one of the weapons, which is in itself a full round action. That of course seems subject to various interpretations, but I'm calling myself right here

I'd allow Thunder charge to stack here as well- it's odd, but it seems like it would work.

All said and done, you'll do about 15-20 mag damage with that manuver given my interp of the rules. Say 2-3 with each melee attack, +d10 from wrathful descent, plus d5+1. Double that and you've got 40 mag damage. It's cool, no doubt, and allows your assault marine (after a lot of xp) to start to compete with devestators for horde control.

I wouldn't call it the most efficient or broken horde killer, because the Heavy bolter is feared across these forums for the fact that it's wiping out mag 100 hordes with a couple of talents and some specialty ammo in a single turn. GMs have at this point, or should have, planned for hordes to get asses kicked.

Let's consider a few things first:
Preternatural Speed can only be taken at Rank 8 by an Assault Marine
Wrathful Descent is an Assault Marine only ability and only useful against hordes

Honestly at Rank 8 the character has now spent over 30k xp on skills/talents/traits; the marine is just about peerless in battle and any Hordes in a particular battle are really just there to slow the players down rather than present them with any real challenge (which is true at Rank 1 IMO) so for me it doesn't really matter if the attack does +1d10 total or +1d10 per attack as you're going to tailor the combats to suit your group anyway.

At Rank 8 it's likely the Assault Marine would also have Thunder Charge and Whirlwind of Death in addition to enough talents that add to WS to ensure +60 on his charge so even if you made Wrathful Descent proveide just a single +d10 damage the marine is going to do enough damage to force a break test a least even on a Magnitude 100 horde. So whether it is a single d10 or multiple d10s it's not going to make much difference either way.

Challenging a group of 4 or 5 Rank 8 marines in combat would be very diffcult. Certainly you won't be challenging them with hordes, except as a means to prevent them from achieving time critical mission objectives.

I'm not really pondering about the effects on a campaign, I'm just looking at the rules as written (and interpreted), and the pure mechanics of it.

Charmander said:

If you interpret it like that, and consider how Lightning Attack gives you 3 x "a melee attack" (Lightning Attack isn't "a melee attack" total), then it could technically trigger three times, due to 3 x "a successful melee attack". Very RAW, yes. But that was my intention.

Charmander said:

Preternatural Speed and Lighting Attack I would say allow you 3 attacks on a charged enemy, as you are taking a half action to charge, and your other half action is spent doing lightning attack. Attacking with the second weapon is part of the full round multiple attack action where you can apply lightning attack to one of the weapons, which is in itself a full round action. That of course seems subject to various interpretations, but I'm calling myself right here

You're not taking two half actions though, you're allowed to Lightning Attack as part of the charge (which is a full action), so by that wording an additional "offhand attack" would be applicable, due to charge being a full action. ^^

But as I said in my OP, different people on the forum is interpreting it differently. My point with the RAW interpretation is that it's broken by any standard, rank 8 isn't an excuse. (And im not even going to bring up heavy bolters and devastators in this discussion).

While you can state that Rank 8 is no excuse and Heavy Bolters shouldn't be included in the discussion, the fact of the matter is that "broken" can only be applied to something that is incongruent with the setting and the circumstances, and the circumstances are that at rank 8 an Assault Marine can probably give a Chapter Master a helluva fight (and maybe even win, occasionally) and Heavy Bolter-wielding Devastators are a great comparison tool given that both careers can have horde-mulching specialities.

Are there issues with the RAW? Sure. Does that give you an excuse to put fingers in your ears and pretend that contextis irrelevant in lessening the "broken" nature of a Assault Marine Rank 8 only combination? Not in my opinion. As has been pointed out several times, the RAW can be interpreted several ways, with no obvious TRUE interpretation, and thus it falls on the individual GM to interpret the rule for the purposes of maximizing fun/entertainment for both players and GM. Guess what that involves? Game- and Group-specific context.

Honestly, when I think Rank 8 Assault Marine, I think of a Space Marine bordering Lucius' skill, and the massive resulting Horde Magnitude damage is explicitly not merely a dead body for every damage, but the reduced morale and capabilities that mob of enemies has after being descended upon by an angle of death capable of cleaving multiple foes with every slash of his blade moving at a speed that makes even other Space Marines look lethargic in comparison, probably roaring praise to a God-Emperor with every shudder of his blade/hammer/whatever as it cleaves/bludgeons through flesh.

Well, my reading is that RAW would have to be interpreted as +1d10 for each and every attack the way it was written. One would have to wonder if this is RAI though. My suggestion is: ask FFG now and it might make its way into the errata 1.0

As a compromise give +1D10 for each hand the PC is attacking with and another +1D10 if he has the Thunder Charge talent and move on with the game.

Alex

BrotharTearer said:

Well, I suppose you're right here. If we ended up in court over this you'd probably win that argument. But as others have mentioned it doesn't totally break my heart seeing that the AM is now specializing in chomping hordes to pieces, and if that's where tha player wants to specialize and spend his time in combat, no problem.

BrotharTearer said:

Charmander said:

Preternatural Speed and Lighting Attack I would say allow you 3 attacks on a charged enemy, as you are taking a half action to charge, and your other half action is spent doing lightning attack. Attacking with the second weapon is part of the full round multiple attack action where you can apply lightning attack to one of the weapons, which is in itself a full round action. That of course seems subject to various interpretations, but I'm calling myself right here

You're not taking two half actions though, you're allowed to Lightning Attack as part of the charge (which is a full action), so by that wording an additional "offhand attack" would be applicable, due to charge being a full action. ^^

You are correct, I misremembered charge. That said, given the actual reading, I still wouldn't allow the 4th attack. Charge says 'you move and make one attack.' Preternatural Speed says "may use Switft Attack and Lightning Attack Talents during a charge." Lightning Attack says you can attack 3 times with one weapon. Two weapon wielder says 'spend a full attack to attack with two weapons.' LA then goes on to say that LA only applies to one of the weapons when using the TWW talent. Nothing in preternatural speed says you can use the two weapon wielder talent during a charge, it mentions lighting and swift attack specifically. Given that, I also wouldn't allow a 4th attack when using preternatural speed to get the half action for lightning attack. If you want to attack with two weapons, spend a full action doing nothing but attacking.

BrotharTearer said:

Your RAW interpretation.

But that aside, if the system is designed to allow a couple of classes and a specialized built to whittle hordes to pieces, why is that broken? On the outset you may go "this is out of control" but hordes are after all meant to be speed bumps to get to the meat of the adventure so why is it broken for players to be able to defeat them?

Reading over the 'my dev is too powerful' or 'why are these boltguns better' you should get many ideas on how to actually structure adventures around this theme and system.

I'd use the common sense interpretation that the extra 1d10 is on top of the three attacks, rather than on each. not every sentence in the book can be written bearing in mind every special talent or combination of talents.

So: Three attacks... plus another one plus d10... at rank 8, against a horde. My natural instinct is to say 'so?'

There's always more hordes. It's not like the GM has to pull one of their own teeth to create each one. Let them wade through blood.

Or... if you really don't want your maxxed-out XP characters to have fun... you could give them a few smaller magnitude hordes instead of a big one. Doing 1000000 damage on a charge to a size 100 horde will kill it, but it would only kill one of four size 25 hordes...

Initially I was going to say I thought it was 1d10 after every successful attack during a charge, but looking at it more carefully I am leaning more towards the 1d10 extra total (though obviously you get 3 attempts to get that successful hit).

Truthfully I am not convinced it is broken with 1d10 for every attack (even though I now think it doesn't work that way). As said Preternatural Speed is a Rank 8 ability. Rank 8 things in every system are hideous (relative to their system... obviously a rank 8 Dark Heresy dweeb is not comparable to a rank 8 Space Marine). Things are meant to do hideous amounts of damage at that point.

borithan said:

Someone post the question to FFG for the next errata.

Alex

oh btw thunder charge states that against hordes a marine can make 1d5+1 unarmed ATTACKS not hits, attacks. a big difference.

yesterday we had our first session with 2 storm warden assulties. every "Munchkin Charge" as we named the Wrathful-Thunder-Charge of Annihilation eliminated a Size 30 Horde.

vogue69 said:

Yeah, some errata is needed for these things. 2-6d10 extra magnitude damage on a charge from just thunder charge is something at rank 1.

I would say it works as follows:

Make a charge, resolve it, than make the 1d5+1 unarmed attacks...


So at rank 1:
Brother Arjan makes his charge and hits with 4 DoS which makes for 3+1d10 Magnitude Damage
after that he makes 1d5+1 unarmed attacks

And yes, Preternatural Speed is an insane Talent which should only be acquired at rank 8

BrotharTearer said:

ah no, we always added only 1D10 at the end. but the unarmed attacks are the death of every horde.

Assaulty WS51 +10 (hatred)+10 (hunter) +10 (Oath) +30 (Magnitude) = 111 WS

rolls d5+1 = let's say 4 attacks

rolls 1, 33, 66, 100 =

1hit +10Successlevel

1hit + 7 SL

1hit + 4 SL

Miss

then the final charge is rolled for 50 = 1 hit + 5 SL

at the end +1D10

ammounts to a whooping 30+1D10 horde damage

vogue69 said:

Don't forget that in melee magnitude damage = DoS/2.

Alex

Well, "common sense" of course limits the amount of d10s from thunder charge to just one. But the RAW is worded somewhat differently.... which is why I'd like some errata.

"When making a Charge against a Horde, the Assault Marine may inflict an additional 1d10 damage to the Horde’s Magnitude after a successful melee attack."

What this all comes down to is that English is not a formal, but a natural language - it's ambiguous by (ahem) nature. This sentence can both be read to mean "The Marine may inflict bonus damage after every successful melee attack he makes when charging" and "The Marine inflicts bonus damage on a charge if and only if he manages at least one successful melee attack". Without clarification, one can only make up one's mind about what would fit better with the game balance and feel.