Lightning and swift atack

By coolzyg, in Black Crusade


Hello


What do you think about newest change in BC that unbalanced weapons can't make swift attack and unwieldy can't make lightning attack?

I'm currently playing swordsman type char with two sword/sword shield, and now I've got single lightning claw (awesome weapon :D ). It is a great combo. But my friend lost his character and made a new one, nurgle sorcerer. As everybody knows nurgle followers love scythe so he thought about force scythe. But it's unbalanced so no LA for him. Also scythe is 2 hand weapon so no pistol. But he can take less cool thing one hand force sword and it will be awesome. With sword vs scythe you get -2 dmg and -1 pen but you get +10 parry (scythe -10). Sword is one hand weapon so there is option for pistol, basic, second sword... And of course with sword you get LA with scythe just SA. Especially as force weapon sword and staff are more efective becouse with each blow you can use your psyche to add aditional dmg if you win WP test with your oponent.


Even worse IMO is power fist/chain fist you will get only one attack with bonus +20 (single attack, aim) vs upgraded dodge/upgraded parry so it's draw. Even if you hit your opponent must parry/dodge only one hit (so he need only minimal success) and then his power field must not work (if we assume he have but in upper levels of play when you have power fist opponent can have field). Then yes you can have one killing blow. But you will feel real strenght of this only versus really tough opponents, because with p fist you get overkill and with sword you would kill second oponent.


Also I think that some two handed weapons aren't as good choice as one handed weapon of same class: chainsword and chain halberd, power sword and power scythe.


So do you feel it's really a problem or I'm just panicking. If you think it's problem what will you do to make it work.

Swift+Lightning Attack costs 1250 xp. That's a significant investment of XP.

In addition, Killing Blow and Crushing Blow (or whatever the All-Out thing that adds concussion 2), etc. don't give a **** about lightning attack. I think you only get 1 counterattack no matter what (not sure), too.

Getting 20 attacks with Lightning Attack is quite nice. But if the enemy has counterattack, they can just kill you with the first counterattack (you can't use a reaction during your own turn, so no parrying a counterattack), and even if it doesn't kill you, they can use Assassin Strike to escape melee range, and hence the rest of the lightning attack. At least, I think that's how reaction timing works. Doesn't seem to be clear at all.

Actually, since parry works just like a dodge (aka dodge hits equal to DoS), and Lightning attack works just like full-auto, you can't counter-attack and stop further attacks by Assassin's striking away. You parry, take damage from any hits you didn't parry and then roll to perform your counter-attack. If you succeed, you can then assassin's strike, which does nothing except put you somewhere else after you opponent's unloaded on you, which can certainly help in getting out of melee with any friends he decided to bring.

In the older games, your version was closer to the truth, but back then lightning attack was 3 individual blows, now it's just one attack that hits more than once, just like full-auto.

Oh, and on the original topic!

Personally I do find it somewhat of an issue. Two-handed weapons keep getting the shaft in these games, and it's a bit sad for people who don't wanna duel-wield. My suggestion would be to talk to the gm, apply the force weapon quality rules to a standard scythe and then see if you can't get the unwieldy trait removed and explain it as exceptionally well-designed for combat.

Also, while it is a two-handed weapon, there's really nothing preventing a guy with quick-draw and the like from simply grasping it in one and pulling a weapon. You probably couldn't parry while doing so, but holstering isn't that hard either. Not perfect, but not a major issue. Furthermore, the Wrist-mounded upgrade from Rogue Trader would allow him to do both with relative ease.

coolzyg said:

What do you think about newest change in BC that unbalanced weapons can't make swift attack and unwieldy can't make lightning attack?

merashin said:

coolzyg said:

What do you think about newest change in BC that unbalanced weapons can't make swift attack and unwieldy can't make lightning attack?

You can Swift Attack with any weapon, be it unbalanced or even unwieldy. The Swift Attack entry has a paragraph about not being able to use unwieldy weapons, but if you look closely it's talking about Lightning Attack and I can't find any reference to Swift Attack being restricted, especially being more restricted than Lightning Attack as your post seems to say.

Yeap you are right. I've spoke with my DM and proposed that 2hand weapon would give 1,5xSB not 1xSB bonus to damage. So it's geting interesting...

So for PC with SB 5 power sword will get dmg k10+10 p 5 and power scythe k10+15 p7 vs "old" scythe k10+12 p7. Not huge buff but enough for strong PC to consifer 2hand weapon