As I was spending experience from my groups last session, I came across the Furious Assault Talent. Isn't it a bit redundant? If you hit with an All Out Attack, it lets you spend your reaction to make another attack using the same bonuses/penalties (in short, another all out attack.) Since using an All Out Attack already makes you unable to Dodge or Parry, isn't this...not actually a downside at all? In other words, this gives you a free second all out attack if the first hits. That's ridiculous good, no? Especially if you are using an Unwieldy weapon anyway, like a Power Fist?

So my main question is, can you couple this with Killing Strike? Killing Strike lets you spend an Infamy point to make your All Out Attack unavoidable with Dodge/Parry. So you use Killing Strike to make your All Out Attack un dodgeable, and if you hit, is the bonus attack from Furious Assault also undodgeable? Or does "the same bonuses and penalties" only apply to weapon skill? Does being undodgeable not count as a bonus?

Even if not, this combo of perks seems ridiculously strong compared to say, dual wielding. Consider a character, like a close combat marine using these two perks and a powerfist. We'll give him 50 WS, the minimum for Killing Strike. Assuming he's got decent strength (maybe frenzy too) he'll probably easily manage a +10 str modifier. The legion fist is doing 2d10+20 (double str modifier) with an pen of 9. Weapon skill is 50, +30 for All Out Attack. That's 85, more if he's in frenzy or has hatred or anything else. It's pretty much a sure hit. If he spends an infamy point, he can't be parried. That fist averages 30 damage, then the second hit another 30. He couldn't parry anyway from the fist. That seems like a ridiculous amount of damage considering it takes 1 or 2 tier 2 Talents.

For comparison, a marine who went the Sure Strike/Lightning attack path is taking +0, and spend a lot more on talents, even if they're using the same weapon. Sure it could generate more hits, but it's less likely to hit.

I guess my second question is if my assessment of the power of these talents is proper, and what you all think of this.

As for the All-out attack, furious assault bit. Mostly, yes, utterly redundant. However, as some people have pointed out, All-out attacks prevent you from dodging or parrying, while furious assault actually costs you your reaction. In most situations the practical effects are utterly identical, but there are some cases, like psykers with Precognitive dodge, in which the exact wording might matter.

As for killing strike and furious assault, totally a GM call. Whether or not one can define "may not be evaded" as a bonus is sure to spawn hours of at table arguments if you've got a group that likes its rules arguments. Personally, I'd probably allow it, since furious assault "tops out" really early on, unlike two-weapon wielder, and could use the boost.

For the combo itself:

First of all, it requires the expenditure of an infamy point. Even at high infamy, let's say 90, that's 9 of them. That would allow you to make, at the utmost, 18 of these attacks. A fair bit. However, for every 1d5 wounds you wanna regain, every time you wish to ignore fatigue, get a bonus to your roll, score a few extra vital DoS on a test or do a reroll, you lose 2 of those attacks. A bit too limited for you to build a combat strategy around, IMO.

Now let's take a two-weapon wielder. Same WS 50 marine, has got both Two-weapon wielder and Blade dancer. He's got two best quality power swords. Not unreasonable, really.

He negates the penalties for dual wielding entirely, down to +0. He then gets +10 due to the Best quality, decreased to +0 again from Lightning attack.

He now makes two rolls at 50, each DoS scoring one hit. Each roll counts as a separate attack, requiring separate reactions to dodge. This, most of the time, means his opponent will not have enough reactions to dodge both. Yes, he's only got a 50% chance of hitting on either attack, and a smaller chance of scoring multiple hits. However, every hit does 1d10+7 points of damage. Assuming the same strength modifier, he'd do an average of 22 points of damage, scoring around 2 hits. That's 16 points less damage on your "average" roll. However, as soon as he scores even 1 extra DoS on either test, he surpasses the Power Fist in raw "on paper" damage, though this is lessened somewhat by the fact that his target gets to subtract toughness and armor for every hit, rather than once per attack.

On top of this, he still gets to parry and dodge, and the best quality and balanced traits on his weapons means he's got a solid parry chance. Useful, when you're wielding power weapons. In short, at this level, I'd say they're roughly "equal" in terms of risk versus reward.

However, the real annoyance is that the two-weapon wielder has plenty of stuff to spend xp on and increase in ability. For him, increasing his WS is quite likely to result in more hits and more damage. For the Furious assaulter, it's increasing his odds to hit from 85 to 90. Not really quite the same return on his investment.

If the two-weapon wielder scores Frenzy, he averages out another hit, while Battle Rage can allow him to continue benefiting from his parrying advantage. Which, in turn, can allow him to use counter attack to devastating effect, since they may not be parried or dodged (they invariably occur on the victim's turn, since it's triggered by them attacking). To the Assaulter, frenzy is just another odds increase, while battle rage and counter attack are talents he's unlikely to get much enjoyment from.

Step aside is another reaction, and with counter attack, yet another attack opportunity, quite possibly against an opponent with a now sundered weapon.

And gods help everyone if the Lightning attacker ever scores multiple arms. Since he's got the Talents to benefit, he instantly scores another attack, allowing him to do 3 attacks total. Another arm equals another attack, though after that it "peaks out" and he's unlikely to score any more. Unless he gets a tail, which allows him yet another, albeit unarmed, attack. Though, since he's a space marine, that's a still a natural weapon attack. Or he's aligned to Tzeentch, in which case that's an attack with any one-handed he wants, ranged or melee. That's 5 attacks a round, at no penalty. All of them can be lightning attacks, or swift attacks on a charge.

In short, at the same level of XP, it's roughly equal, maybe a little bit better than dual wielding. However, it has far less places to "expand" unlike the dual weapon wielder, who can put more XP into it and get far greater returns on his investment. Of course, this is not touching upon Sorcerers. These muthafuckers make, by far, the nastiest melee characters, if they put their minds to it. Get a fair bit of XP on them and they can two weapon wield with Warp time, and possibly precognitive strike. With Force weapons. Then again, that requires a whole lot of experience points and carries a noticeable risk of imploding.

Alright, that puts it in perspective. Although I thought you could only Lightning Attack with one hand, not all of them?

Here's another related question: If you have a powerfist in one hand, and a power sword in the other, and ambidexterity so you have no specific main hand, you can attack with the fist and still have the sword out to parry without counting as dual wielding, yes? From what I've read, dual wielding penalties only apply when you're attacking with both hands, not just from holding a weapon in each hand.

The character I'm playing is a nurgle renegade, who's primarily a medic and support character, but with some melee ability. I'm thinking he'd be better off getting a powerfist and furious assault rather than dual wielding, because I'll be wanting to spend most of his experience on non-combat skills anyway, but want him to have some capability when he gets engaged. It seems that furious assault is better than dual wield if you only want to invest a couple talents worth.

Nope, you get to lightning attack with every attack, presuming you have the talents for lightning attacking and two-weapon fighting in the first place. Even worse, each attack requires a separate evasion roll (and reaction) to avoid.

And yes, you may indeed carry a power sword just for parrying, and take no penalties to the parry roll for dual-wielding weapons. Pg 244 has the rules explicitly allowing that, and stating you take no penalty for it. And, while that is indeed the section on two-weapon fighting, note that it says when the two-weapon fighting talent is needed, meaning it applies to characters even without it. Just sayin' that in case your GM argues you'd need the talent to use that section of rules .

Though if you're carrying something just to parry with, use a shield. Make it a power weapon (Storm Shields are the precedence for allowing this), and then apply the Storm Field weapon upgrade. Instant sundering of anything it parries, and a nice big chunky bonus to your parry roll.

Also, if your primary role is support, wouldn't you be better off with a ranged weapon? I mean, if you're gonna be running around healing people, chances are you're not gonna be spending an awful lot of time on the very front lines of combat, but rather going where the wounded are. A ranged weapon thus allows you to deal some damage regardless of your exact position, unlike melee, which has a rather specific area of engagement. Usually defined as "All up in their business".

Likewise, if you don't wanna spend a lot of xp on combat stuff, full-auto and most ranged weapons tend to give you more combat viability for little or no xp beyond that of a decent ballistic skill score. In general, melee gets most of it's power from talents, with equipment as a secondary. Ranged weapons, especially in the early game, tend to get most of their power from equipment, with talents a secondary line of upgrades. In other words, ranged is cheaper on the xp.

All that said, yes, I'd say that in terms of low investment cost versus yield, Furious assault might be more potent. However, it costs you your reactions, which is a very risky thing unless you're really confident in your damage reduction. Granted, as a Nurgle follower, you're probably gonna get a lot of that eventually, but it's still a big risk. However, assuming you have a somewhat solid WS, I'd probably advise investing in Swift Attack instead. You can do it with a power fist, it doesn't cost you your reaction and while it doesn't generate multiple attacks, it does get multiple hits in once in a while, which is good enough for what you're after.

Edit: Oh, and as a general "keep yourself alive as a medic advice": invest in armor. Power armor is good, since you want to stay alive so you can keep other alive, and that speed increase from hulking will help you in moving into cover and towards friends, which is where you'll want to be. Likewise, a force field is a good idea, especially if you do decide to go the furious assault path. The shield, or any power weapon with the storm field upgrade, is another great investment, because your primary concern in melee is making sure your opponent doesn't kill you, not to kill him back. Weapon sundering is a great way to do that! If you do get the shield, ask your gm if you could be allowed to "hunker down" and count it as cover, since a solid shield really should protect against bullets too.

Also, especially in case your BS is crap, invest is a flamer. It's easy to hit, and any enemy on fire is an enemy most likely not attacking anyone for a round or two. If possible, consider getting a Doom Siren. It lacks the flame quality, and it requires you to be wearing power armor, but it's hands free, which is a great thing for someone who, presumably, needs one hand free to stitch people up. Plus, killing people through screaming is just badass.

Thanks for the general advice. I went with melee mostly for role playing reasons. It better fits the characters personality, even if it's technically less powerful. And in the party I'm in, it is more appropriate, as the main guy I'm healing is a melee built chaos marine, so I really need to be able to stand just behind him, and so need to be able to defend myself from whatever nasties he's wading into. If I was trying to make the optimal character, I'd probably go ranged. But in this case, I'm trying to optimize my current character.

I didn't realize you could swift attack with a fist? Can you swift but not lighting attack? I know one of them says it doesn't work with unwieldy weapons.

The shield is a good idea, as is the Storm Field for parrying purposes.

Yeah, nothing wrong with doing certain unoptimal things for roleplaying reasons, but as an outside observer, I can mostly give you advice on the rules

Yes, you can swift attack, but not lightning attack. The swift attack talent says you can't lightning attack with unwieldy weapons, for some reason. It also says you can't lightning attack with two weapons at the same time, but the big hefty two weapon fighting section disagrees with that, as does, I think, various rules clarification question answers floating around. Likewise, the entries on the unwieldy special quality also only mentions lightning attack. In short, swift attacks can be done with, far as I know, every melee weapon in the game. Including power fists. For the pain.

And yeah, shields are badass and unfortunately underutilized in 40k rpg games, though tbh their rules usually are a bit on the weak side, not to mention painfully inconsistent.

As for the killing strike thing, the text change from previous versions is rather telling. in Deathwatch it was 'his melee attacks for the round' that became unavoidable. In BC it is 'that melee attack.' (I know it's not as intuitive without the other books in front of you but it does make it much more apparent where they were going with it.)

Also look at adding Hammer Blow onto that. It might be worth asking officialy if the furious assault follow up actualy counts as an All Out Attack.