Hello all. My acolytes want to make custom weaopns for the DH campaign. my psyker wants a gun that does low damage but is rapid fire and my assasin want to make a glasss sword that is hollow that he could fill with poison. I want the advice of experts and should i allow them to make these weapons?

Hi,

one none-expert-advise: get the Inquisitor Handbook (IH) or a PDF-copy of at (at RPG Drive Thru).

The "low damage / auto fire" gun has already been invented. It is a sub-version of the machinepistol (Hive-section, as far as I remember).

If your assasine wants a weapon that can be easily fitted with venom, introduce him to those strange sticks in the "Primitve" section of the book.

Low damage autofire weapon: Autopistol from the core book. Flattens bullets on heretic armour quick as you please!

Sword-like weapon that has poison inside of it: Tox Dispenser weapon upgrade from RT Into the Storm p.127 Adds Toxic quality to a modified melee weapon for one round by pushing a button, holds 10 doses. Rare availability, +0.75kg You really want a copy of this book if you don't have it. Recommend against holding this one in your teeth unless you are the Dread Pirate Roberts...

Aye, as has been said, all those things already exist.

That said, there's absolutely nothing wrong with introducing new weapons into the setting - either as new serial production types or as truly custom works of art that your Acolytes either ordered or built themselves (there's a skill for that in the IH). As the books themselves say, it's "a galaxy of guns". Just make sure that they fit to the game, both from a mechanical as well as a fluff point of view!

Look towards whats already existing, if they are consulting a tech priest or weapons expert they will likely be pointed in the direction of weapons that exist and suit their needs.

The Encarmine in the Inquisitors Handbook (p115&121) is a solid projectile autopistol with 1d10 Damage and a ROF of S/3/8, to be honest anything over eight really isn't going to matter. This would seem to suit the bill nicely for what you are describing. If Las is more his style the Fury Laspistol does a little more damage but not the same amount of fire (p172&177).

As for the glass sword that dispenses poison look towards your standard sword rules wise and just let him try and get his hands on a tox dispenser from Into the Storm (p127), it's a Rogue Trader supplement but mechanically bar the lack of price it's good to go. It's got ten charges to release it's poison, this simply gives the weapon toxic. If he wants to have a semi transparent sword for coolness why not let him? Maybe the tox dispenser is intergral.

Also as Lynata was saying it is a galaxy of guns! The stuff in the DH and supplements are the ones commonly made and found in the Calixis sector. You can always have some sage point them in the direction of weapons made in the Ixianad and Scarrus sectors or even further affield. I'm sure somewhere in the 40k Universe someone somewhere thought a bolt pistol that could go full auto would be cool... it probably jams a good bit though.

well my assasin wants the sword as soon as it hits the blade will shatter onto the enimies. heretics or xenos aike.

Brother-Captain Belfire said:

I doubt he will be able to afford replacing the sword every time he hits with it, especially as it will shatter even if the blow gets parried.

To make it effective, you would probably want an explosive to disperse the poison.

Here is an idea:

Blade of a Last Stand

Description: Each Blade of a Last Stand is a sword with a built in grenade (chosen when the sword is created) designed to go off should the wielder die while using it, the sword will explode, hopefully taking several of the wielders foes with him. Unfortunately, the machine spirits of these swords are so eager to perform their final duty that they will go off at the first sign of damage to the sword.

Rules: The sword behaves as a normal sword except that if he releases his grip without engaging the safety, comes in contact with an active power field, or if the sword it destroyed. Then the sword is destroyed and its payload is activated, with the effect centred on the wielder. The payload can be any grenade the gm approves of. If the grenade has no listed blast radius, then it will affect the wielder and anyone within melee range of him.

The wielder and anyone within melee range of him are too close to dodge the explosion.

It takes a half action to return the machine spirit of the sword to its slumber. If the wielder releases his grip without doing so, the sword will explode.

No idea about cost.

Wasn't there some sort of crystal sword in a Rogue Trader book that partially shattered and then simply re-grew into its original shape all the time?

Extremely rare thing, though, so probably not recommendable.

But the grenade-sword made me grin.

Lynata said:

A fractal blade... in the hands of a moritat I could see one being terrifying. It's shattering is more of a background thing as it gets sharper.

So literally a glass sword with poison in it. Well I guess just take a swords stats take out balanced (for all that poison moving around inside and and it's not like you'd want to parry with it for the logical reasons stated above) and add the tearing and toxic trait to it (tearing for the glass breaking into the wound). If you parry with it their is a 50% chance of it breaking. Treat all other weapons as if they had the power field special rule for the purposes of parrying, unless it already does in which case the weapon will automatically be destroyed if parried by a power weapon. If these stats seem suitable to you the thing that needs to be decided is the cost, for such a specialised one use weapon I'm thinking expensive... definitely atleast 100 thrones as a minimum.

Gaius said:

Gaius, I would have been hard-pressed to come up with a better set of mechanics.

There are already at least two poisoned weapon options:

- Tox dispenser from Into The Storm. An upgrade for any chain or primitive melee weapon.

- Sieve Blade from Radicals Handbook. A full weapon in its own right.

There is also the toxic Glass Knife (of xenos origin) mentioned somewhere either in Creatures Anathema or Disciples of the Dark Gods (IIRC).

Brother-Captain Belfire said:

The other posters made very good suggestions as for gear: my only hint - should you decide to build custom weapons instead of using the ones described in the manuals - is not to allow your players to design the weapons they like, the way they like; reserve this task for yourself.

Listen to your players tastes and wishes, then design the weapons you think are appropriate both for their current level and the enemies they’ll be facing: it would be unbalancing to create a weapon with Penetration 6 and many other special proprierties if your players are still in the early levels and the enemies they're facing are routine NPCs.

Berengario said:

I will take that into consideration

Luthor Harkon said:

While it is toxic, that's not because of poison, but because of the shards it leaves in the wounds.

Brother-Captain Belfire, getting back to your OP:

- For your psyker, I'd recommend you give him a look at the weapon tables in the back of the Inquisitors Handbook* and decide on a weapon from there. Find and read it's flavour text in the book, just to make sure the weapon doesn't have any surprises. If the weapons there deal too much damage, give him dumdum rounds and promise him that all enemies will have at least 2 points of armour.

- For your assassin wanting "a glasss sword that is hollow that he could fill with poison", the Tox dispenser will work if he wants a generic poison that just kills the enemy, while the Sieve Blade can be loaded with any drug and used to inject it into the target.

- For your assassin wanting a sword that "as soon as it hits the blade will shatter onto the enimies", you will need to house rule something. But, since this weapon can only be used once**, you can afford to make it more powerful if you limit the number he gets.

*If you don't have access to a copy, buy one. It is a very useful book for Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader.

**I'm thinking that I should rework the Blade of a Last stand into a weapon upgrade.

Does the assassin want the sword that breaks to be the same one as the poison type? If so, a weapon with disposable glass (or ceramics?) "blades" might be a good option. It could be a stab-knife with a hardened tip but weakened blade, so that whilst the physical force of the attack could penetrate a victim's body, the blade would easily break off when yanked free, its liquid contents now spilling freely into the bloody wound, thus delivering an extremely large amount of poison.

Mechanics-wise, I'd increase the effect of the poison (decrease time until it takes effect, harder to resist, etc), but also make it so that a certain AP+TB threshold (5?) means that the blade breaks off before fully entering the body (damage halfed, no poison effect). Alternatively, it could also depend on a certain minimum damage inflicted as wounds (essentially including the same AP+TB threshold, but modified by the Assassin's dice luck).

Though ... thinking about it, the glass idea sounds a bit stupid now, at least concerning the solution outlined above. Instead, the weapon's blade could well be made of metal, but simply constructed in a way that it automatically "disconnects" and remains in the victim, possibly using barbed hooks as a trigger. If you keep these disposable dispensers small enough, you could even string them up in a row, enabling the weapon to be used more than once before requiring a restock. The last part before the hilt could even be a normal blade so that the knife remains remotely useful even when all dispensers have been spent ...

Quite a weird concept, but hey ... it's 40k!

from france

a simple classical idea for accrobat oriented fighter shoes retractable mono knife. or think of the dark eldar and all their blade at shoulder, knee and so on. not terrible by themselve but collectively they hit hard because it s not the blade that is a weapon but the body. think of the most aerial and acrobat performer of the "cirque du soleil" than gives them those armored bodygloves and put they in a fight. you will see that the body is a weapon.

the 8 spider said:

err...well my assasin is not like that. he is the more of the "I go up to you and stab you repediatly..oh new sword!!"

QUOTE efidm=488761]
Does the assassin want the sword that breaks to be the same one as the poison type? If so, a weapon with disposable glass (or ceramics?) "blades" might be a good option. It could be a stab-knife with a hardened tip but weakened blade, so that whilst the physical force of the attack could penetrate a victim's body, the blade would easily break off when yanked free, its liquid contents now spilling freely into the bloody wound, thus delivering an extremely large amount of poison.

Mechanics-wise, I'd increase the effect of the poison (decrease time until it takes effect, harder to resist, etc), but also make it so that a certain AP+TB threshold (5?) means that the blade breaks off before fully entering the body (damage halfed, no poison effect). Alternatively, it could also depend on a certain minimum damage inflicted as wounds (essentially including the same AP+TB threshold, but modified by the Assassin's dice luck).

Though ... thinking about it, the glass idea sounds a bit stupid now, at least concerning the solution outlined above. Instead, the weapon's blade could well be made of metal, but simply constructed in a way that it automatically "disconnects" and remains in the victim, possibly using barbed hooks as a trigger. If you keep these disposable dispensers small enough, you could even string them up in a row, enabling the weapon to be used more than once before requiring a restock. The last part before the hilt could even be a normal blade so that the knife remains remotely useful even when all dispensers have been spent ...

Quite a weird concept, but hey ... it's 40k!

He want it to break because I allowed him to gather some tyrandid bio mass and he tried to craft into a acid(which worked but will continue to change contastantly). He wants the blade as soon as it hits i will shatter on the foe. The disposable glass is a good idea.

Over in the Rogue Trader Gamemaster forum there is a discussion about ideas for cool archaeotech items. I thought of this thread when Nerdynick said:

"Since the Soul Drinkers have recently come up in my game:... (edited for relevance) ...The Inquisitor in those books had a sword that can fragment and turn into a bunch of flying shards of metal, seeking out weak spots in the armor."

Sounds like a higher powered version of the sort of thing you're talking about. The book referred to sounds like a good source of fluff for fragmenting swords. Does anyone know the reference? Which novels featured the Soul Drinkers?

It is also a great thread in it's own right as well, lots of good ideas for neat 'treasure'. I recommend it.

http://new.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp?efid=159&efcid=3&efidt=354998&efpag=2

the 8 spider said:

what should be the damage of these shoes? I like the idea

Perhaps not so much shoes as a pair of greaves i remember reading some where in IH about a pair of Mirker's Greaves. Primitive armour Legs 4AP 8kg 50 thrones Average availability "the wearer can also kick with the same effect as though they were punching with knuckle dusters" so maybe you could mono them. Brass Knuckles 1d5–1 Pen 0 Primitive.

For those rules Gaius suggested I would also add an addendum along the lines of the eviscerator. If the player critically misses they must make an agility test or apply the damage to themselves as they hit themselves with the thing and shatter the glass containing the poison/acid/whathaveyou.

Lynata said:

This idea of replaceable blades filled my head with images of a thin dagger with barbed replaceable blades that slide onto a central spike that would release poison once the handle is detatched. So the person stabs, the barbs catch and as the blade is retracted the handle comes away and the blade remains stuck in the body, releasing poison at the same time.

I'm picturing cat claw hook serrated blades sliding onto a misericord style puncture dagger.

Not glass, but I could imagine that being quite deadly, especially if it had a quick reload time (half action?)

Not sure how many of you actually train in martial arts, I have been for almost 20 years, sword staff and unarmed. and I have to admit, a glass sword filled with poison sounds pretty **** effective against a single target if he knows your coming. The concept I'm envisioning is that if you stab him the sword does damage and possible brakes, shattering causing extra wounds and filling the wound with poison. If he straight up blocks it will shatter throwing shards of poisoned glass at him and if he parry's the strike it has a partial chance to break.

A little bit of history Native American and plenty of Pacific Island tribes used Obsidian glass knives, spear tips and arrow heads as weapons and they were amazingly effective. Glass is sharp.

The way I would work the mechanics is this:
1. The sword is that of a normal sword without balanced but is mono. (again, glass is sharp)
2. On a hit it does normal damage but has a 50% chance to shatter causing an additional d3 wounds and poisons the target.
3. If he is parried there is a 50% chance the sword will shatter then a Hard Agility test will need to be made for all combatants in melee to dodge the shower of glass and poison.

The blades will be easily replaceable with a Half action to "reload" the new blade into the hilt.
As for him wanting to make them, if he has either the Craft: Armourer skill or Craft: Artisan I would let him make them at a relatively slow rate. I mean, glass is not hard to find or buy and all he would need to do is melt it down and pour it into molds and heat join the two halves together so that there is a hollow center he can fill with the poison. Because he would need a small furnace and a hot mold for this I would not let him craft during a mission but only on down time. The rate I would say would be 1 test per day and 1 + 1 additional blade per 2 additional degrees of success. Also there is the cost of supplies. I would say no less than 500 thrones for the furnace and tools and at least 5 thrones per blade in materials.

As far as the gun goes, I agree with let him look through the IH book, there are some good high ROF weapons in there.

Also, I love the idea of the grenade sword, I may need to use those in my game...