When using a melee weapon like a chainsword does your STR bonus count for damage. Also what do DoS do when making such an attack?

Your strength bonus is added in on top of the weapons base damage. Marines have Unnatural Strength(x2), so you double the strength bonus. So a Strength stat of 45 = strength bonus of 8. With power armour adding +20 (this is handled after the multiplier), this example becomes strength bonus 10.

A chainsword base is what, 1d10+3 Pen 3 tearing, balanced? So in this example the attack hits with 1d10+13 damage (roll an extra d10, and take the higher of the two), and ignore 3 points of armour on the enemy.

2 handed weapons already calculate the damage into the higher base damage of the weapon.

Finally, degrees of success have no effect with melee attacks, except when damaging hordes (and maybe a few other situations). Generally, it is a success test. The enemy then makes their own success test of dodge or parry to avoid the attack (this does not consider the amount of degrees of success the initial attack had though).

thank you KommisarK i thought that was the way to do it and that is how i've been running it.

DoS have an effect on all attacks. The minimum damage dealt is always equal the DoS. So if you succeed by 3 DoS, your minimum is 3.

DJSunhammer said:

Good catch, I did forget that mechanic. Its one of those little known side features of damage dealing. Its how the game deals with the anti-climatic scenario where the sniper got 10 degrees of success on a target that was unaware and didn't doge, then rolls a 1 on damage. And of course it works in melee too.

Would that be the minimum damage you can "roll" or the minimum damage total? (before or after removing the targets toughness/armour)?

If its the minimum damage total... it doesnt seem like it would have an effect on most scenarios involving a space marine (perhaps its more relevant to dark heresy?)

~ Zilla

g0dzilla said:

The DoS rule mentioned above replaces one dice roll for damage with the amount of DoS's the attacker had when making that same attack. It does not count as rolling a "10" for the purpose of Righteous Fury (as that requires a roll of a natural 10). It does not replace the minimum damage dealt by the attack as a whole, but rather the value on a single die (so multi-dice weapons don't get a crazy damage boost from this).

Once again, the main reason for this rule is to prevent the anti-climatic situation of an attacker achieving 10 DoSs on an attack, and then finding that he rolled minimum damage, doing almost nothing to the enemy.

Ah okay - that sounds entirely reasonable then. Cool.

Does anyone have a page reference for this?

~ ZIlla

Don't have the book with me, but the rule should be in the section of the combat chapter, where it starts to list off the steps for performing an attack.

It will have something like:
1. Determine Bonuses/Roll Attack (It might be in this section)
2. Opponent Dodges
3. Determine Hit location
4. Determine Damage (it might be here)
5. Apply Damage

On DW core at the beginning of page 245. It changes in BC tho where you can swap DoS with the dmg dealt by one of the dmg dices.