Greetings,

I want to include a scene where my pc move through a narrow street and people on the rooftops start throwing rocks and other hard objects on them. I looked through the DH & RT rulesbooks, but I was unable to find any guideline on what damage to assinge... lets say on a 3kg piece of rock being dropped on you from above.

Most marvelously, the designers of the Telekinesis powers themingly flinched away fromt his topc as well. They rule that as soon as a Psyker stops using his/her power on an object, it falls to the ground SLOWLY.

Anyway, does anyway know the page where I can find my answer? Thank you!

Why don't you use this

Primitive Weapons

Name Class Range Dam Pen Special Wt Cost Availability

Improvised Thrown SBx2 1d5-1 0 Primitive 0.5 kg - Plentiful

What do you think?

Why don't you use this

Primitive Weapons

Name Class Range Dam Pen Special

Improvised Thrown SBx2 1d5-1 0 Primitive

Wt Cost Availability

0.5 kg - Plentiful

What do you think?

It is of note that the attacker's SB gets added on top of the damage (just making sure), though this will likely only serve to negate the target's TB.

Hmmh. Given that you likely want a barrage of small and medium objects, maybe we should think of this more like an Environmental Hazard rather than a series of individual attacks. How about this:

1. For each character starting his turn inside the hazardous area, roll a d10:
   0-5: You notice rocks and bottles crashing down all around you. It's a riot! Luckily, the Emperor watches over you. You remain unharmed.
   6-7: You catch sight of a blurred, fist-sized object heading straight at you. (potential damage: 1d5 )
   8-9: The crowd really seems to like you. A hail of small objects is being thrown at the character. (potential damage: 1d10 )
   10: Throne! Somebody just threw a piece of furniture at you. (potential damage: 2d10 - if result is above 10 the character is knocked down )
2. Once per round, a target may test Dodge +0 to avoid the attack. If the character has a melee weapon, he may also test Parry -20 . If the character has a basic ranged weapon, he may test Parry at -30 . A character who is running may not Parry.
3. The damage of successful attacks is applied directly to the head location, modified by TB and any armour the character may wear.

Alternatively:

1. For each character starting his turn inside the hazardous area, let his player test Agility -30 ( -20 if running). Degrees of Failure determine the number of objects that hit.
2. Each hit confers 2 damage . Add up the total damage from all hits.
3. Apply one half of the total damage (now modified by TB and AP) to the character's head location, and the other half (now modified by TB and AP) to the body .

Just two "quick and dirty" ideas of how to stage this.

Will force fields such as a Rosarius, or the psychic power "Catch projectiles", protect against "falling rocks", or are these not considered "Ranged Attacks"? Is there a weight limit to what will be caught by these?

What about falling pianos? 1 Tonne weights ala Roadrunner?

Damage from falling things is very simple:

"Rocks fall - everybody dies"

Darth Smeg said:

I'd say that both a Rosarius as well as such a psychic power would protect. In terms of the Rosarius, regardless of the intent, there's little difference between somebody swinging a hammer at you or a large stone being dropped on your head. And as for the psychic power, a stone can easily be interpreted as a slow-flying projectile. Psyker can also move/lift normal objects via telekinesis, right? A stone pretty much falls somewhere into the middle between a bullet and a lifted object and thus should be affected as well.

No idea about weight limits, but I would simply apply common sense there. Rocks thrown by people = yes. Huge boulder flung by a catapult = nope. At some point, the refraction field will simply overpower and shorten out, the point being defined by the grade and quality of the device.

A Psyker may have actually have more of a chance here, but only if he notices the object in time and can focus on deflecting it long enough. He may not even have to stop it in mid-air (which will not happen immediately but only result in a gradual deceleration), but could opt for several alternatives such as: pulling another object into the path and thus effectively block the attack, crush the incoming object with the power of his mind, affect the path of the incoming object to have it crash somewhere else, ...

The Rosarius does NOT protect against melee attacks. Only Ranged attacks.

Technically, I guess that includes Thrown weapons like shurikens and throwing knives. But pianos dropped from the roof? Large rocks? Dunno...

Darth Smeg said:

Darth Smeg said:

Technically speaking, a knife thrust actually occurs at higher speed than a throw ...

I think it's a legacy from Dune, so I guess you'll have to ask Frank for the reasoning there

Lynata said:

Technically speaking, the damage should be proportional to the kinetic energy of the thrown (or falling) object, that is half the mass times square speed . And speed can be deduced from Galileo's law of falling speed ( g times t , where t is the time where the object started falling at velocity 0, g is a constant which roughly equals to 10).

So the kinetic energy of a falling object is approximately half mass times (10 times time falling)² (mass in kilograms).

How to use that? Don't make any actual calculation. Just use it to get the proportionality roughly right. You can see that the time the object spends falling is very important, whereas the mass is linearily important (if you take an object two times heavier, the damage should be two times higher, but if it falls two times longer, the damage should be four times higher!).

Well, the RPG is already defying logic if it really works against thrown weapons but not melee ones. Maybe it would be better to subscribe to the "abstraction" excuse and just use the "categories" (does it fly or is it handheld?) instead of attempting to gauge mathematic formulae. :/

Darth Smeg said:

I think it's a legacy from Dune, so I guess you'll have to ask Frank for the reasoning there

I was of the understanding that Rosarius/Refractor Field etc had an area of effect around the character, and that when in melee, the opponent is also within that area? That would explain why ranged attacks may be countered, but melee attacks pass through without problem.

Of course a pistol ranged attack made in melee combat or just at point blank range would still go through, then ...

It'd be a neat explanation otherwise (and maybe one could still handwave it in lieu of something better). Kind of like a spherical ~2m diameter "shield bubble" effect, I presume?

Though I wonder if it'd make such a device too powerful if it would work like in the GW books. I know the RPG goes out of its way to promote melee combat, but still ... is this necessary for balancing?

I found the reference. Page 189 of the Inquisitor's Handbook. It explains "the Rosarius' conversion field is generated some distance away from the wearer and so has no effect against blows struck in close combat." Given that, I'd say that a ranged attack less than 1m away would ignore the Rosarius. It's inside the area of effect.

To answer the original question, I'd say that anything coming from outside the conversion field at a fast enough velocity to damage a person, would count as an attack. Be it from falling rocks or whatever. Conversely, and mainly because I'm evil, anyone trying to assist the character by (for example) throwing a weapon his way would probably fail in the attempt as the weapon would simply *spang* against the field and fall to the ground.

Well, size has to matter, otherwise it would protect against a charging enemy as well, considering his whole bodymass as a "projectile".

Or not, considering he wouldn't be moving all that fast...

Darth Smeg said:

I think size would have to come into the equation. Imagine a Rosarius trying to stop the round from a Vulcan Mega-Cannon! Likewise a rock from a trebuchet, or a charging enemy (if he's fast enough) would be too large to be stopped by the field.

I doubt there is any fluff about it, but I'd run with the Rosarius having a rudimentary 'overload protection', where if the volume/mass of an incoming projectile is too large then it automatically shuts down for the briefest moment of time rather than just burning out immediately. It's complete conjecture (insofar as a fantasy setting allows) but something that makes sense within the context of the universe.