Where does it list the penalties for power armour. I've read in a few places that PA gives a -30 to stealth checks, but Hulking, according to the book only gives a -10.

Is there any penalties at all for light PA?

Lecram said:

Its a bit unclear atm, especially since CSM has the "Black Carapce" rule which means they dont count as hulking even when wearing power armor.

So if you read it as written they have no penalties (the -30 to stealth isnt even in BC I dont believe) which is kinda silly. I think a lot of people are using the Hulking rule for all purposes except the bonus enemies get to hit you.

I know the Black Carapace debate and want to avoid it, so let's assume that it's for a regular human in PA and not a space marine. I just want to find the penalties.

Page 175 under Power Armour (starts on 174). It lists all the benefits and negatives. On pg 49 under Black Carapace: "Although a Space Marine in power armour has the Size (Hulking) Trait, his enemies gain no bonus to hit him thanks to the Black Carapace."

That's all it negates, is that bonus to hit, not the stealth penalty or anything else.

Lecram said:

The penalty isn't strictly for Power Armour - rather, the penalty applies to all armour with 7 or more AP, at least in all the previous games. Whether that particular rule is in Black Crusade, I can't remember at the moment.

I don't have a book in front of me to quote from but i believe PA also gives you a penalty on any task requiring fine manual dexterity (like picking a lock, performing surgery etc), however i cannot remember if its a -10 or -20 penalty.

Larkin said:

Thats quite debatable since pg. 175 simply says it ignores penalties and doesnt say that its only for to-hit. I agree though that its probably supposed to be only to-hit bonus that it ignores. I wouldnt find it unfair to impose a -30 penalty to stealth checks like a power armor has in the other systems.

Crate said:

Page 175 doesn´t say that you ignore all penalties, it says that you don´t count as Hulking. An important difference since being so also yields benefits, ones that you wouldn´t get according to page 175. Luckily page 175 is wrong about it.

Just look at the Space Marine in the Adversaries Section. A movement of 5/10/15/30 with an Agility Bonus of only 4. That´s because he is Hulking and gains +1 AB for movement calculation. Which in return means, CSM are Hulking to.

Fortunately, this isn't a debate on the benefits of Black Carapace. To go back to what No1-H3r3 said about penalties for armour over 7.

What are the penalties for? If you have best quality Carapace (which brings your armour from 6 to 7) does that count? Is the -30 including the -10 for hulking?

What are the penalties for? If you have best quality Carapace (which brings your armour from 6 to 7) does that count? Is the -30 including the -10 for hulking?

Nope, Best Quality Carapace is generally taken to not inflict the -30 and it's not including the Hulking Penalty.

Only BQ Light Carapace...

Personally I find the whole 7+ armour gives -30 to sneaking rule a bit irritating. I feel that the original idea was that it was up to the GM to assess the penalties as he went based on the situation at hand (ie, to assign a difficulty, including the nuisance of bulky, noisy armour). The flat -30 rule basically prevents anyone even trying to sneak in power armour unless they are just maxed out anyway, and doesn't take any context into account (sure it should give a big penalty on a silent country night... but in a noisy factory?). It is also a bit unclear... does power armour get -40 to concealment as it has a -10 for being hulking anyway, or is that meant to be included in the -30?.

borithan said:

That isn't a problem. I'm pretty sure it already says the GM can ignore and rewrite rules where he wants to.

I like the idea of penalties for armour. Why take Mesh when you can take light PA? The PA is far superior in every way. I'm statting up a sniper-type character with the wealth pride and was considering buying Light PA. Obviously there's different "flavors" for different types of armour, but in a life and death combat, it seems like I'd rather be decked out in PA than anything else especially if I'm not going to be penalized for doing so.

So far the only penalty is weight, which is mostly negated by the bonus to STR.

As far as GM fiat goes, I hope our GM takes this into consideration, but I could see our players revolting against penalties on armour unless it's written somewhere.

borithan said:

Don't forget that you can have more then one set of bonuses/negatives. So if you were trying to sneak in power armour in a noisy factory, i'd give you at least a +20 on a basic stealth check, more on a silent move check. I'd also assume the penalty for sneaking in power armour would be just -30 not -40 although I could understand someone saying -40.

The main reason I'd say they made the -30 rule was to give GMs a guideline on how much the bulky, noisy armour would affect stealth (sneaking in power armour should be **** hard ), but as always you can adjust it if you see fit.

@borithan

The flat -30 rule basically prevents anyone even trying to sneak in power armour unless they are just maxed out anyway, and doesn't take any context into account (sure it should give a big penalty on a silent country night... but in a noisy factory?). It is also a bit unclear... does power armour get -40 to concealment as it has a -10 for being hulking anyway, or is that meant to be included in the -30?.

As Nimas already noted, a noisy factory would likely give bonuses to sneaking that would cancel out parts of the PA penalty - however, the PA still makes you bulkier than normal and likely restricts your range of movement and thus the possibility to hide. The penalty is quite justified.

I also agree with -30 penalty. There is reason why SM scouts sergant wear scout armour (well there is few reasons but nvm) and not astartes PA. It's also harder and more interesting to take light carapace and go stealthy to enemy camp without support of 8 ap and +20 str. On the other hand if you would disband penalty GM have free hand for stealthy GK terminator squads waking you up in your tent

A flat -30 penalty seems like an artificial counterweight to the benefits of armour. There are occasions when PA sticks out so **** obvious that you really shouldn´t try sneaking around with it, but imo there are many more where it doesn´t make much of a difference (as in, the -10 suffices). Our group does this case by case.

The penalty isn't just for the size of the armour. It's for whirring servos, humming generators, hissing exhaust vents, etc. etc.....

Draggah said:

Which is all up to interpretation. Whatever noise a PA makes or does not make has never been canonically defined afaik.

For all I know there are/have been numerous occurences of units PA who where capable of infiltrating in the TT, and Infiltration can mean a lot of things, so again nothing specific. In some novels SM sneak around "Assassins Creed Style" (Ventris in Chain of Command for instance), in others the power unit gives away a humming noise (Horus Heresy I believe).

So it´s up to interpretation, and that offers a lot of possibilities and a broad window of imagination (even for non munchkins^^)

Whether it makes a discernable noise might be dependend on the mark, in what shape it is (unrepaired battle damage, poor maintenance, brand new?) or on whether the PA is under stress or not. Or it might give away noise all the time (then why allow sneaking at all in quiet areas?).

Would it be a reasonable upgrade on an armour to make it quiet or maybe even add the effects of a cameleoline cloak? Just say it was designed for stealth.

You could possibly create a subsystem for sneaking bonus/noise reduction.

I remember sneaking and pickpocketing in power armour in Fallout 2, didn't make sense but how fun it was.

Anyone come up with some houserules for damaging and repairing (power)armour?

The big Stealth penality was always stupid. The tabletop equivalent is Infiltrate. In 4th Edition whole chapters could infiltrate while using power armour. Currently Chosen, one Ultramarine Tactical Squad under Sicarius, one Raven Guard Squad that has Shrike in it and as far as I remember every Wolf Guard who joins a pack of Wolf Scouts can do it. Penalty? Yes, those Space Marines are supposed to be good. -40? No.

Mjoellnir said:

It's worth noting that the scale that infiltrate works at in tabletop is far different from the scale of WH40kRP. It's one thing to infiltrate enemy lines by avoiding patrols, holding still a mile away, and generally avoiding everything. It's quite another to be trying to hide ten feet away from a supernatural horror in the room while wearing the same armor.