More questions. I hope you guys will be as quick to respond as last time, your help is really much appreciated.

1: Do holocaust burn in a sphere around you? Like if you're standing on the 3rd floor of an apartment and use holocaust, will you fall down 2 storages? Do you die if you use holocaust and there just happen to be a gas-main beneath you?

2: Unnatural traitsPLEASEDON'THITME. I know this has probably been done to death, but I really need to know how these bloody things work. Like unnatural intelligence for instance, because as me and my friends see it, according to RAW Unnatural INT is only really usable if you're playing chess. Can someone please explain how these things work? Examples using Strength, Intelligence, Agi and Willpower will be much appreciated. And please don't tell me not to use them, because knowing my GM that's not gonna happen.

3:How do personal augery work? Can I use it on myself to try and divine the future or do I need someone for whom to divine things? How do you guys play the messages gotten through PA? I get that its supposed to be cryptic but (please just go with this) If the question is "where did i leave my carkeys?" or "How do I get the shitstains out of my underwear" just how cryptic is the answer supposed to be? Conversely what if the question is a great and maybe complex one like... "How can I please my inquisitor" or "How do we unravel the mystery of the -insert arcane plotdevice here-"

thanks in advance for any answers.

-Nearyn

Nearyn said:

As a GM, I would rule that yes, everything within 6m of you is impacted by the holocost. If you do enough damage to eat through the floor or to the gas main, you definitely run the risk of detonating it.

Nearyn said:

Unnaturals are higher level powers, at low levels they can create a bit of an imbalance. The unnatural trait doubles your bonus- so if you have as WP 70 and unnatural willpower, your willpower bonus is 14, not 7. This can be super potent for psykers when they have a power that adds their WP bonus to range, damage, or number of things impacted. In addition, unnatural trait provides an additional degree of success automatically (should you actually get a success) in contested rolls for every level of unnatural you have. For strength, the main thing you use your strength bonus for is damage. For toughness, it would be resisting damage. For agility it would increase your initiative.

In Deathwatch (maybe RT or some DW supplements?) they expanded the unnatural trait to also shift the difficulty of a test involving that attribute down by one (essentially giving you a +10). The rule isn't in DH core, so it's really up to the GM if you use that portion.

Nearyn said:

I would say you can't use it on yourself, though others may play it differently. I don't make the responses all that cryptic, using things the player and character would have the potential to understand, I just tend to make them a little more symbolic than "two orcs will try to stop you when you land on the planet." Something more along the lines of "those born of mold and blood will feast on your corpse"

Unnatural x:

As said, it doubles your characteristic BONUS. This applies to all relevant tests and everything that uses your Characteristic Bonus.

Example: An adept with 40 Int and unnatural Intelligence x2 has 8 IB (Intelligence Bonus). This applies to Medicae and possibly other situations where your IB matters. It also means whenever you succeed on any Int-based skill you get 2 additional Degrees of Success. Thus this is mostly useful for Healers and Knowledge skill checks.

UT makes you very hard to kill as TB applies to your ability to resist damage. It is less useful on Toughness-based skills as there are few.. maybe you can Carouse alot longer without getting drunk?

US is good as it applies to damage. Also some skills (Climb) where multiple DoS might help.

UA is good as it applies to Initative, and the Dodge skill (if you dodge you dodge more tautofire shots!). Also other skills. I think Movement is an exception, UA doesen't apply to movement speeds IIRC (see the trait).

Charmander said:

Mostly correct. On opposed tests, Unnatural traits grant their multiplier as a bonus to the degrees of success; Unnatural Characteristic (x2) would grant 2 extra degrees of success, not 1. Unnatural Trait (x3) would grant 3 degrees of success, similarly.

Also, the Inquisitor's Handbook provides another benefit to Unnatural Traits, by reducing skill tests (and, as far as I can tell, only skill tests... which is weird) by a number of degrees of difficulty equal to the Unnatural Trait multiplier, minus one; Unnatural Characteristic (x2) would reduce difficulty of a skill test by 1 (Difficult to Challenging), (x3) by 2, etc.

Unusualsuspect said:

I stand corrected. Must have gotten mixed up with the reduction rule- UT does in fact grant you the multiplier bonus as a straight bonus to DoSs in opposed skill checks.

Ah hah! You found the DH version of the rule I read in DW (I don't have the IHB)- and yes you're correct, the reading of it is "When making Skill Checks" so it would definitely only apply to skil checks by RAW...I agree it's very odd, you'd think it would help when testing the raw characteristic, but hey.

Thanks for the answers. Helpful as always

I have the Unnatural traits down now, and I got the answers I needed for the holocaust thing. Still in doubts in regards to the Personal Augery, but I'll have to work it out with my GM.