Kshatriya said:

The Dev in my group has Immovable Warrior, not UD.

If my Dev hits with all 6 shots, he does 7 Magnitude Damage. If the Assasult Marine (who has Death Is Joy and WS 53), makes 2 average rolls to hit a Mag 40 Horde, he does 8 Mag Damage. (3 hits per Swift Attack + 1 for Death Is Joy).

Tangent! Why isn't your Dev using Metal Storm in his HB? I think the Dev in my group (with a pre-errata bolter) realized just how "bad" regular bolts are against Hordes this past mission. Blast is where it's at.

Also DiJ is not a system-level mechanical issue that leads melee to be superior over ranged. Your AM got lucky with that, it's a great armor power. Your AM is then in melee with the Horde, can't Dodge or Parry its attacks unless he is a Tyrannic War Veteran or near one, that's a bad place to be.

Kshatriya said:

Presumably the player thought that the reduction in damage and Pen weren't outweighed by the benefits of blast. I haven't asked him.

My problem with the BC melee rules is that they further nerf twohanded weapons in comparison to TWW as the stronger melee weapons can't do lightning attacks.

Umbranus said:

That's my impression as well, and frankly I never understood the limitation. I would allow Lightning Attack with Unwieldy weapons, and add a strength bonus multiplier to any true two handed weapon.

Umbranus said:

I'd just make that into a Talent.

Really I understand the reason to limit easy Lightning Attacks with Thunder Hammers. As if a Swift Attack isn't enough with one of those.

That isn't really a problem with BC rules, since Concussive works with assigned number you can just adjust the strength until you have something that looks good to you.

As far as I am aware that doesn't actually fix it, as I thought the minimum level of Concussive worked the same way the whole rule worked in Deathwatch, just now there is the option to make it even more powerful.

borithan said:

No, the only penalty applied to Tests to resist being stunned by a Concussive weapon in Black Crusade is 10x the number in parenthesis. That penalty replaces the Degrees-of-Success based penalty applied by the Deathwatch version.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

Right.

As an example, a Concussive [0] weapon has no penalty. A Concussive [3] weapon has a -30 penalty.

Here's a question that's come up in my group.

The RAW says Astartes cause an additional hit against Hordes in melee for every 2 DoS rolled just due to their size. This is pretty easy to resolve when the DW rules have each attack in a Swift/Lightning Attack require a separate attack roll. But how does this interact with the BC version of Swift/Lightning Attack, where the number of attacks is determined by the DoS? For power weapons, which give an additional hit per successful attack...how does this proc under BC rules? On each DoS for Lightning Attack and every 2 DoS for Swift?

ILLUSTRATIVE HYPOTHETICAL:

Say I am wielding a power sword and attacking a Horde with Lightning Attack and get 5 DoS on my attack roll. My WS Bonus is 5, so my melee "RoF" is 5 anyway. I therefore make 5 attacks, and assume each has damage left over after AP + TB. That's a baseline of 5 hits (1 per attack with damage in excess of AP + TB).

Power weapons inflict an additional hit per attack on the horde. 5 attacks, 1 baseline hit per attack + 1 additional hit per attack due to Power Field = 10 hits now.

ASSUMING you use the same attack roll to determine "Astartes bonus hits" as you do "number of attacks," I inflict 5 additional hits. But is this per attack, or flat?

• If it's additional hits per attack, that's 5 extra hits per attack on 5 attacks; each of those attacks was already doing 2 hits (1 base + 1 Power Field). So that'd be 7 hits per attack, or 35 hits total.
• If it's a flat number of additional hits, that's 5 extra hits, period. I had 5 attacks doing 2 hits each, or 10 hits total. 5 flat additional hits would result in 10+5 hits, or 15 hits.

I'm not sure what the intended rules are. Obviously the former makes melee high-risk, high-reward vs Hordes (lots of damage vs getting creamed with no Reaction use outside of Squad Modes or being/having a Tyrannic War Veteran around). Paired with a Talent like Whirlwind of Death and you have an obscene amount of Magnitude damage at endgame (but isn't that OK)? Even paired with chargen-available powers like Death is Joy and Wrathful Descent, you're talking a good chunk of damage, or killing even meaty Hordes outright. The latter seems more sane: a good amount of damage, competitive with a Devastator with Metal Storm, but not truly obscene, and still high-risk being in melee.

Thoughts? Anyone care to check my math and tell me if I messed it up?

N0-1_H3r3 said:

As for the swift/lightning attack thing the single attack roll is the 'Attack' for the 'per attack' effects. you get a number of 'hits' based on DoS from this single attack. So the power weapon is applied once, the bonus number of hits from 'space marines vs. hordes' is only applied once, etc. if you are dual wielding you can get all of them once per attack roll.

Our SW Assault marine dual wielding lightning claws is truly scary. 70 WS is routinely geting the max bonus to hit vs large hordes so rolling vs 130. 'average' rolls get 8 DoS. he hits 7 (max of WS bonus for LA) + 4 for base DoS +1 for power weapon. and he gets to do this twice so he's routinely taking 24 mag off a horde each round. I imagine it's even worse in a BC game where you can have mutations to get extra limbs as well.

You would consider the DoS for the extra horde damage at the same time and separately from the DoS that determines how many times you hit with a Lightning Attack [or Swift or whatever you happened to do.]

Like this.

Lightning Attack

5 DoS=5 hits.

+1 mag damage for the power field quality

+2 mag damage for 5 DoS

All of this is a total of 8 Mag damage.

Lightning Claws interact the same way, in case you need clarity on that in the future. The extra damage gets applied to every hit as well, not just one.

8 Mag damage per attack? Where do you get 8? I am pretty sure the Power Field thing applies per attack, not per hit. And in my above post I think I screwed up the "Astartes vs Hordes," which is another hit per 2 DoS, not per DoS.

With Lightning Attack, 5 DoS on attack roll = 5 Attacks (assuming WS Bonus is at least 5).

Each Attack scores 1 hit as a baseline + 1 from Power Field. That's 2 hits per attack, or 10 hits total from 5 attacks.

5 DoS is +2 hits from "Astartes vs Hordes." You say that's per attack? That's 2 additional hits per attack.

So that would be 4 hits per attack (1 base + 1 power field + 2 Astartes vs Hordes), or a total of 20 hits for 20 magnitude damage.

DJ Sunhammer has it correct.

Power Field inflicts another "hit" per "attack". An attack is a single dice roll, not every hit inflicted by a Lightning Attack (if using Black Crusade). The only way to get additional "attacks" is to use two-weapon wielder (or, more likely in Black Crusade or the like, have multiple arms or similar). This means (if using the Black Crusade rules) unless they are dual wielding a character is always limited to 1 extra hit per attack, regardless of whether they are using Standard Attack, Swift Attack or Lightning Attack.

Lightning Attack: 1 Roll = 1 Attack

The roll produces 5 DoS. This means 5 "hits" (not "attacks").

Power Field gives +1 as they have made 1 "attack".

The for bonus hits for DoS (for Space Marines) gives an additional "hit" per 2 degrees of success. This means +2 (for the 5 DoS).

This totals at 8, not 20.

Compared to Deathwatch Rules: Lightning Attack gives 3 separate "attacks," which only inflict 1 base "hit" (though have the similar bonus for every 2 DoS).

This means each attack does 1 base "hit" + 1 power field "hit" + x bonus "hits". With the same 5 DoS for every attack (though obviously it isn't terribly likely to be so consistent and it being under Deathwatch rules it would work out as 4, but to the same result), this would be 2 extra "hits" per attack, for a total of 4 hits. Adding this together means that the Marine would inflict 12 "hits" on the Horde (16 if he got the same DoS if attacking with Two Weapon Wielder... though on exactly the same rolls he would get 3 "hits" per attack meaning he would only get 12).

Please note that BC finaly has errata. Biggest change is Charge action.

Charge (page 235): Replace the action’s description with: “The
character rushes at his target and delivers a single melee attack. The target
must be at least four metres away, but still within the attacker’s Charge Move
(see Table 9-31: Structured Time Movement). The last four metres of
the Charge must be in a straight line so the attacker can build speed and
line up with his target. Once the attacker reaches his target, he may make a
single Standard Attack at a +20 bonus (the +10 for Standard Attack is
included). If the Charging character is unarmed, he can attempt to Grapple
his opponent instead of inflicting Damage. See Grappling, page 237.”

So no more charge swift attack.

That seems to have been quite quietly released...

And I also notice that the errata does actually refer to each "hit" from a Swift Attack as an "Attack"...