Sup fellas. Took about a year break from the game, but I'm running another campaign now that First Founding came out.

One of the questions that I had was about the lightning claws after the errata. How do they fare after losing Tearing? Are they still worth it?

They cannot be permanently requisitioned until really late in a Deathwatch marine's career, unless I missed something. 45 RPs for a pair doesn't really fit into most missions' Requisition.

So what's the verdict on them?

Not seen them used much yet myself- just a little, and they seem to do okay. Nothing spectacular but they hold up well to things like the power sword. The proven keeps them from every doing less than 10 damage, and the 2 pen higher than the sword can come in handy. I haven't had anyone use Sig Gear on them. If they did however I'd let them sig gear one of them, then purchase the second one per mission for 15 req.

Removing the Tearing kinda nerfed them, IMO.

It's just hard to imagine aspiring to anything else for a future Raven Guard Assault Marine.

Maybe I can make a pair of Arcane ones with Tearing.

Opinion: Tearing was just roll two dice, take the better, the proven (4) quality means the minimum damage is always 4 from the die. On average, that would only be about 1.5 damage less per hit over 1,000 hits. So it is not that much of a disadvantage. The main problem is that it makes your Righteous Fury chance 10%, instead of 19%. Which can be a much more significant in the long run.

HOWEVER

A) While the force weapons still have "special" in their entries, the lightning claws lose that property. This would mean that the errata's version would not have the extra damage for a good hit roll. Which, if implemented that way, would make the lightning claws changes outright suck.

B) If you look at the top of the section in the errata, on page 10, it mentions that the tables there are just meant as a variant if people are taking too long with their dice rolling, not as an actual update/errata. So if your group doesn't like the variant, don't use it.

In my campaign, I use the errata stats for Lightning Claws, including replacing the Tearing quality with Proven (4). However, I kept the Special quality of additional damage per DoS on the attack roll. To me, that is the defining trait of Lightning Claws, and if you remove that, then it's basically the same as a Power Sword but with a much higher req cost.

AriasDerros said:

Fairly certain it still uses all the rules under the lightning claw entry.

The same way Thunderhammers give +1 to your unnatural strength despite no remarks in the weapons tables pre or post errata.

If its in its description its still part of the game unless the errata specifically states, "Delete/Ignore the following lines from rulebook whichever: 'yadda yadda yadda'."

herichimo said:

I was under the same impression. Unless the errata specifically says so, the writeup doesn't change.

Thanks for putting the changes into perspective, guys.

Interrogator Dariel said:

They have both Proven and the special quality in Black Crusade, if that helps.

Gokerz said:

I did notice that, so it helped a great deal. Besides, just because it doesn't say Special in a weapon's stats on the chart doesn't mean that there aren't other rules that apply.

I appreciate it.