but a chaos marine is encased in metal. why does smite work on them and not the driver of a tank?

DacenMarus said:

"GM ruling." followed by "Fine, the smite reflects off the tank and bounces back to hit you in the face. Roll that damage and pray its low."

Also I think chaos marine armour is mostly ceramic rather than metal

Ha ha I like it. I was also thinking of something like

telagos said:

Unfortunately, ceramic is an insulator... However, since electricity follows the path of least resistance... Any point in the armor that is not insulated would be a path for the electricity to enter... And hadn't counted in the fact of the Space Marine armor being metal and/or ceramic and therefor possibly a SM shouldn't be able to be effected either...

Then again that was after last game, where my rune priest, another marine, and an a DH char were hallucinating due to chaos powers in the area, got confronted by two other SM who in our hallucinations were chaos SM so we killed them - one by bolter fire from my hallucinating Brother, the other from a pushed Smite with Emperor's Favor ultimately doing over 100 points of damage, in part from not having the errata and therefore re-rolling the entire damage for each confirmed Favor occurrance... Thankfully we didn't really need to explain that one to the Inquisition since half the crew of the ship wound up posessed and killed off the Inquisition contingent... From what GM has said, we're pretty much gonna be renegade once we shake off the posession and be sorta like the A-Team... Do good where we can and try to stay off the map...

Mayhem1703 said:

Although in that situation the metal box of the tank would act as a Faraday where as the ceramics wouldn't, assuming that it had the conductivity to not be ignored, which considering there's a lot of cables and a mostly water marine in there.

Of course it could just be that you can see target the aura of a Marine in Armour which you can't in tank, if you want a hippy answer.

Or the warp knows the difference between a creature and a tank.

End of the day though, I don't think it's too harsh to make a pskyer get a second psychic ability to affect a vehicles.

nolsutt said:

I'm not sure I see the issue with letting it attack vehicles. It seems to me to just be a wording issue (I assume it can attack robots and other nonliving "creatures"). Is the balance issue really so bad? Once we have the Perils rules working properly (no rerolls) a Psy Rating 6 Psyker, which I'm going to take as average, using it on Fettered, which is what any rational person is going to be doing, is going to do 3d10 damage Pen 3 which can be dodged, has range modifiers, and so forth.

EDIT: if Pusing is the issue ,maybe import Dark Heresy's much more lethal (and much more colorful) Perils table and automatic 1CP per Perils roll rule or bring the damage amounts in the DW one to a level that a Space Marine would actually be scared? DW perils are actually kind of lame IMO.

The wording of Smite is clear: RAW it only affects creatures, therefore stuff that has a skull next to its stat block. This limitation serves to balance smite against other psy powers which may be affect vehicles too but without the penetration or the radius perhaps.

Letting it affect vehicles and have a radius and this damage and pen, it means you don't really need any other offensive psy powers.

Alex

As for balance,

You have a HALF action attack that can deal 14D10 (+1D10 RF, come on, 14 dice) Pen 14 damage with Blast (14) with a range of 140m. Thats what its capable of doing at max damage off the top of my head. Completely and massively more powerful than it should be. That damage is just plain rediculous, on top of the fact the librarian's focus power test is likely to be off of a 120+ at that level (so failing on the auto-fail result. 94?).

I didn't think about the whole creature thing, would be nice to reach a concensus, as our librarian has been blowing numerous of the vehicles I've pitted against them almost like he's swatting flies. I decided, eventually, against vehicles and their much thicker armour, bulkier and more robust construction, and extra weight damage and AP are halved, at the least. But I would not mind at all if smite was just useless to vehicles. It would require more thinking from the players.

Another thing I've taken to doing with our librarian, since he has warp conduit or favoured of the warp (the one where you take the more favourable result), I'll "disable" this talent for a while if the librarian uses a large number of psychic powers in a short time. Telling him the amount of warp power being drawn into the world (by him and/or others) and the creatures attracted to this power counteract his talent. Essentially the player looses the second chance on the phenomenon table if he uses his powers too often. It has made the librarian re-think pushing his attacks several times.

Warp Affinity is the reroll one. it can't be taken with rite of sanctioning and gives you 1d5 corruption each time you use it. This also isn't on the standard Librarian advance table.

The bigger problem is the Warp Conduit for +1PR when pushing and -10 on your Psychic Phenomenon rolls.

Also note that the reroll from affinity says with no modifiers so you don't get the -10 if you use the reroll. still broken, but at rank 8 they are going to be disgusting no matter what.

As to the 'creatures' part. About half of the attack powers just say targets others say creatures. So the pick a specific creature, no vehicles, interpretation for smite seems pretty reasonable. Hellfire specifies you can just pick a point to center it on so if you have maxed out your DA librarian and can do 14d10 in a 28 meter radius up to 700 meters away you likely wouldn't bother with smite. Yeah, it doesn't get pen, but with that many dice it's not likely to matter.

Compared to the other attack powers Smite is much shorter range but does some super nice damage. I don't think it's going to change much either way. if you go with the no vehicles rule it just encourages them to use the chapter specific powers. It does create the oddity that a blood angel librarian doesn't have much they can do to vehicles but the dark angel librarian still destroys them.

Realy I think the fairly short range on Smite makes it easy to have vehicles be a problem. Heck, the range on the hammerhead railgun means it can be a problem for a Dev with a Lascannon. The thing can shoot you from up to 2 kilometers away. Sounds to me like there wasn't enough between the librarian and the hammerhead(s).

Strictly enforcing the rules for psychic powers is essential if you don't want them thrown around like candy. Fate points can not be used to reroll phenonmenon or perils of the warp rolls. And remember that focus power tests automatically fail on a 91+ (though they can be rerolled with fate points).

Did the drivers of the Hammerhead even try to Dodge? I mean, did they just sit there? Couldn't they have cruised out at 50kph and ran away?

I remember the ability he uses now.

Oath of Knowledge, the team always lets him lead and he always takes that roll twice on psychic phenomenon ability.

How about living lightning from a Space Wolf? It calls down a lightning bolt to hit any "target". If the lightning from the sky can "target" anything, arbitrarily meaning it can hit any type of target, why would the lightning from smite not be able to? I would be willing to say it is all or nothing when it comes to these lightning attacks hitting vehicles. These two types of lightning contradict each other in their choices of targets; so which is it? Can warp lightning harm vehicles or not? I would leave this to the rules guys because right now it just seems like type of target was overlooked on one of these powers... so which is wrong FF? Smite or Living Lightning? Are both of these powers just powerful blasts of energy similar to a las cannon; but manifest in reality with the appearance of lightning? If so, and lightning is only the appearance it manifests in, these attacks could and would most certainly harm vehicles.

JagerXII said:

For the same reason that the one has Pen while the other has Shocking: they are two different, totally unrelated powers.

JagerXII said:

Living Lightning can, Smite can't.

JagerXII said:

This is all power-gaming excuses. Smite does not harm vehicles, LL does. They are different powers, alright? If they were not, they'd be synonymous and the whole thing would be redundant.

Alex

I would like an explanation from a fluff perspective. These powers are a manifestation of warp energy in reality. I could with no hesitation and no desire for power gaming see space marines, through codex power training used all across the imperium, try to manifest a warp energy blast in the form of lightning; something that the human mind can comprehend and not recoil from rather then the raw power of the warp. Viewing a bolt of change should be deeply disturbing but seeing it given another more "real" form would be something that an imperial psyker would attempt to do. Saying also that living lightning or smite are actually electricity is also ridiculous because the warp is raw indescribable energy and not the quantifiable phenomena we call electric lightning. The powers that chapters specifically have are just similar manifestations of warp energy, hence why they are all so similar; just given different flavors to make the chapters more unique. On the other hand if you want to look at blood lance from a table top perspective, it was designed with the destruction of vehicles in mind from what i can tell being str 8 ap 1. However in deathwatch it can only target creatures, same as smite. The rule book has flaws, that much we can all agree on; there were oversights, and this could definitely be one of them. With that in mind, please come up with a fluff response to the rule challenge.

Power gaming was never a thought when the query was made. I just want to tell a good story which is the point of the game anyways.

How does the fluff perspective matter at all with this? The rules are clear.

Roll your own explanation, if you care.

Aöex

The rules are pretty clear, but from a fluff perspective, you say it yourself- it's the warp. For whatever reason, the living lightning can attach itself and hit vehicles. It's similar to a bold of lightning. Smite is a holy weapon of vengance, and targets the enemies of the Emperor, and the vehicles are simply tools, not innately anti-human (heresy! shouts the puritanical admech!). Or you could say it's how the user learns to use the power in the first place- maybe smite and living lightning are smilar expressions of warp energy, but since the warp is kind of a reflection of the person using it, it's the intent or mindeset of the user. So again, Smite is to be used against the living creatures that are His enemies, and Living Lightning is essentially just warp electricity.

They are clearly different powers, manifested with a different goal in mind, and as such operate differently.

N00b question, came up in my introductory run of Final Sanction, but it (sort of) relates here.

How can you increase the range of Smite to 100m? The rule-book indicates that the range is 10xPR, but my starting Librarian only has a PR of 3, so it basically nerfed him to Bolter use at any range exceeding 30m.

Can you take a penalty to exceed the range? Or is a 100m smite limited to Librarians who push with PR 5+.

dave9au said:

A Rank 1 Librarian should be using his bolter most of the time.

I assume that, since it acts like a ranged weapon, the range listed for Smite (and not other psychic powers) is the Base Range. So, with a Base Range of 30 meters (foolishly using it Unfettered), Short Range will be up to 15m, Normal Range up to 60m, Long Range up to 90m, Extreme Range up to 120.

Psychic powers by and large are not long ranged attacks. And the rank 1 fleshtearer librarian in my campaign is happy with his chain and force axes (custom wargear and nowhere near as good at parrying for a bit extra damage, also appropriate to the character and chapter).

bogi_khaosa said:

And you would simply apply the Range modifiers to the Focus Power Test, i.e. +30 Point Blank <--> -30 Extreme Range

dave9au said:

That's my reading of it.