Reading the chapter abilities, some are great, and feel like they help flesh out the chapter more. Some, on the otherhand, seem rather focused and extremely specialized. The BT chapter ability, reads awesome, bypassing toughness, for damage, and as you level doing much grater damage to psykers. But, the main problem I see, is that only one adversary in the corebook has the "Daemonic" trait. Now, I know that GM's aren't always going to throw Daemon Princes out like candy, but there seems to be little to no use for the power until much later in rank. And even then, only versus psykers and warp-touched entities. Could anyone help me rethink the validity, or usefullness of Righteous Zeal?

It really depends on the campaign you're in, IMO. It's a terribly powerful ability when dealing with campaigns that focus on chaos, as many times when fighting chaos, despite their stat blocks not being in the core book, you'll face daemons of some kind, and all daemons have the daemonic trait- be they nurglings, khorn berzerkers, pink horrors, or daemonettes. Unfortunately they didn't fit a lot of the daemons in the core book, but more of their profiles can be found in Mark of the Xenos and the Dark Heresy/RT supplements. And these are not Daemon Princes or Greater Deamons, these are troops and elites.

Alternately, a GM of the customizing variety could build their own. You could pretty easily turn some of the elites from other things (think Chaos Space Marine or Tyranid Warrior for example) from the book and slap the daemonic trait on them, change their appearance and a couple other abilities, and you suddenly have a capable daemon.

That all being said, if your campaign focuses on Tyranids or Tau and largely ignores the forces of chaos, the ability isn't as helpful.

Adding to what Charmander said:

Were I GMing, and a player had a problem with this, I may add a lesser form of this as House Errata and said "Vs. Psykers and Sorcerors, ignore half TB, and gain half the bonus to damage as above." While this might be hamstringing it, it does allow it some versatility and doesn't take anything away while still keeping in flavor. Though, this might require some playtesting to get this to balance just right.

Charmander said:

They got Holy Vengeance squad mode ability when push comes to shove. Most chapters have got some abilities that aren't all that useful. *cough* Imperial Fists *cough*

And while their Solo Mode ability is very specialized it is incredibly useful against daemons. Daemon Prince of Nurgle anyone?

Alex

Charmander said:

With tau this is certainly true, but the initial ability provides some defense against psychic abilities, and at rank 3 it gains bonuses against any psychic user, both remain useful against hive tyrants. You could even expand the role, and count any synaspe creature as a psychic user, if someone felt it was still underwhelming.