As I'm not setting my DW campaign within the Jericho Reach, I decided to make a new set of relics for the Watch-Ship the group are embarked on. While the mundane, non-weapon relics I'm more or less happy with, I'm not so confident with the weaponised relics. I figured I throw them up here in rules form, with a small snippit on what they are meant to be (as I haven't writeen the flavour text yet!)

I'd appreciate feedback - anything between "I will kill a man for this in my game!" to "This is terrible. These rules are bad and you should FEEL bad!", although the more constructive the better.

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The Wages of Sin (Astartes Boltgun)
Class: Basic
Range: 150m
ROF: S/2/4 / S/3/-
Dam: 2d10+4X / 1d10+9X
Pen: 4
Clip: 40
Rld: Full
Special: Gains Proven (3) against Daemonic Targets, Sanctified
Requisition: 15

(Pretty simple, a bolter that's been blessd many, many times and was once used by a watch captain to kill a Daemon Prince. Fairly self explanatory. The due stats are there for pre and post errata, to suit everyone's tastes.)

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Purification (Astartes Plasma Pistol)
Requisition: 30
MC Astartes Plasma Pistol that can be fired as a pistol-class Astartes Flamer, taking up a single round of ammunition.

(No stats, it's juse a dual-spec weapon. Shoot it as one, or shoot it as the other, your call)

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The Hades Blade (Astartes Lascannon).
Class: Heavy
Range: 300m
ROF: S/3/-
Dam: 3d10+8E
Pen: 6
Clip: 20
Rld: 2Full
Special: Razor Sharp
Requisition: 40

(Rather than a semi-auto weapon that fires several beams, the idea of the Hades Blade is that it shoots a single, continuous beam that can be splayed across several targets. The Razor Sharp is there to indicate what happens if someone focusses the beam over one area with great skill)

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Expression of Fury (Mk. 3 Astartes Power armour left arm)
Requisition: 15
Replaces the left arm of a suit of power armour with the armour from a Mk.3 suit. The
Expression of Fury can be fired as an Astartes Hand Flamer with an unlimited clip size,
provided the left hand is free. In addition, successful unarmed melee attacks with the left arm
causes your opponent to make an Agility test or be set on fire, even if you didn't manage to
cause any damage.

(I don't really need advice for this one, I just wanted to show it off cause I like it - the knuckles and palm of the battle plate are covered in small nozzles that allow them to set their hand on fire, occasionally throwing small fireballs or jets of flame. )

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The Arrow of Rama. (Cyclone Missile Launcher).
Class: Mounted
Range: 300m
ROF: S/-/-
Dam: 3d10X
Pen: *
Clip: 1
Rld: n/a
Special: Vortex*, Blast [5], Devastating [7], Proven [3]
Requisition: 75

*Vortex: The Arror of Rama ignores toughtness, armour, fields or any other form of
defneses when dealing damage. In addition to the damage rolled, the results rolled on each
individual damage dice are applied as critical damage to a random location on the target. This
critical damage ignores True Grit, but not Reinforced Hulls.

(Here I expect criticism. The idea here is to have a single-shot vortex missile within a Cyclone missile launcher housing. Where you'd have other missiles, here you have stasis fields and auto-reliquaries just keeping the missile stable until it is ready to be fired.)

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Gobsplitta
Class: Melee
Dam: 1d10+7R
Pen: 4
Special: Gobsplitta!, Tearing, Felling [1]
Requisition: 20

*Gobsplitta! Against Orks, this chain claymore causes Fear [1] that ignores the
Fearless talent. In addition, the Gobsplitta counts as X damage type against Orks and Hordes.

(A double handed chainsword that has rows of sharpened, adimantium dipped Ork Teef, and has been used to slay innumerable Warbosses. The big question is whether it should be a reclaimed Ork weapon, or an Astartes weapon that's just been heavily modified?)

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Gimme yo' opinions!

The Wages of Sin (Astartes Boltgun)

I see no problem with this. I like specialized bonuses.

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Purification (Astartes Plasma Pistol)

Again, no problems. I might say that the flame ability replaces the Maximal firing mode.

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The Hades Blade (Astartes Lascannon).

I would think about giving it an effect like flame instead of semi auto. This could show the sustained beam laser effect, moving across an area. Below is an example of what I might allow as a special ability.

Relic Beam – This weapon has a secondary mode of fire that allows a continuous beam of energy to be moved across the battlefield. In this mode the weapons range is reduced to short only, it gains the flame quality, out to short range, it consumes 3 charges, it loses the razor sharp special ability, and gains overheat.

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The Arrow of Rama. (Cyclone Missile Launcher).

This is one of those things that should have a Requisition of NA. This is a GM tool to allow for an epic, climactic end to a campaign.

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Gobsplitta

Again, I like specialized bonuses.

I love the idea of the continuous stream lascannon. I see some issues with how that build would work against the bigger targets, even with razor sharp and hitting 3 times. I'd go with something like this:

ROF: -/-/10
Dam: 1d10+2E
Pen: 6
Clip: 100
Rld: 2Full
Special: Continuous: multiple hits from a continuous weapon hit the same location. Penetration, Armour and Toughness are only counted once per attack against the combined damage from the hits.

This lets you get multiple hits against something like a horde or focus the beam on one location and cut through the heaviest armour if you have the skill to keep the beam steady.

Thanks for the comments guys!

With the Hades Blade, I've adopted Uncertain's proposal - it seems neater overall, and also gives a slightly better mental image to players of how it works. That being said, as I've recently been attempting to hammer out rules for Xenarch weapons, I'm totally stealing Nathiel's ideas for that

Purification I might just leave as is with three firing modes. It's a little clunky, but it's designed to be a more varied weapon (and arguably not as good as a regular Plasma Pistol if it lost Maximal fire)

The Arrow of Rama is pretty potent, but not nearly as much as a Vortex Grenade. I may still assign the requisition cost, but not grant access to it for all missions ("We're shipping another missile in from Mars - you'll jsut have to wait!")

And again - thanks for the feedback!

Re: missile vs grenade: your missile has a range of 300m. A grenade…does not. So…yeah. That's a good reason for N/A Req.

Also for your lascannon…I want to say that there's a good weapon in the game already to model this effect, but I'm not sure where off the top of my head. I think it's in Rogue Trader - Hostile Acquisitions, but not sure.

Quite possibly - I haven't managed to get my hands of HA yet. I'm hoping to grab it in the next couple of weeks, so if you work it out, let me know and I'll look it up/steal shamelessly if the system looks nicer.

And in regards to the Arrow - clearly you haven't had a machinator array armed techmarine attempt to throw something into space before (Although, seriously, that is a good point. The reason it's so 'cheap' is because you've got a minimum of 100 req going into the Terminator armour that you need to mount it on)

That las weapon may actually be from Adeptus Evangelion 2.5, which is a fanmade game that uses the Dark Heresy system. I'll check that out for you after work but the AdEva is freely shared stuff if you google it.

And your req minimum immediately vanishes when someone plays Deathwing. =P

Kshatriya said:

Yeah. Strangely enough, upon looking at that, I laughed and informed my crew that they will never, ever, be given a free suit of Terminator armour. To the point that the Terminator armour in the game is all named, all pre-rolled, and all use th rules for lost Relics if anyone manages to have one destroyed.

No free Terminator plate. Not even once.

Guess nobody is playing Deathwing then.

Fluff wise the lack of Dark Angels is an issue Mechanically, the Space Puppy player was interested in using the Deathwatch rules to represent being inducted into the Wolf Guard, but I managed to convince him to do otherwise (by telling him that there were additional prerequisites to getting free Terminator armour, mainly tied to barometric conditions in the realm of Hades). I'm slapping together a slightly different character build system that doesn't use Advanced Specialties that I'll be adopting before the group get to that level anyways (BC modification - I just prefer that ruleset for a lot of things)

professor_kylan said:

Actually im pretty sure the 100 Req is supposed to include the weapons as well

The 100 req covers weapons, but (unless it says differently or I've plain been doing it wrong) it doesn't cover cyclone systems which are back mounted, not arm mounted.

That being said, if I AM doing it wrong, don't tell my guys otherwise they'll ALL just rock the Cyclones everytime they don their armour!

The 100 is 60 for the armour and a minimum 40 for weapons. If you want the big guns you pay more. For example: a storm bolter and power sword will fill both hands for the 40 req you get. A chainfist and assault cannon would require 30 more req.

Cyclone Missile Launcher is a weapon system. I've seen no reason not to allow my players to equip their Tactical Dreadnought armor with Cyclones from the 40 requisition that you have to spend on weapons out of the 100 for the armor.

Concerning the Gobsplitta, it would most definitely be an Orc-manufactured weapon. First and foremost, I know of no chapter that would coat TEEF, of all things, for use as blades. A very rich, very ostentacious Warboss/Nob, on the other hand, would very much appreciate bling that takes even a Space Marine 2 hands to wield…

The Gobsplitta actually has fluff now! (I forgot to post earlier - I think it does a good job explaining the teef idea.)

"This double-handed chain claymore was the chosen weapon of Brother-Initiate Loan Severi of the Flesh Tearers chapter when he was first initiated into the Deathwatch. His first mission was a failure, with his weapon stolen by an Ork Warlord who brutally wounded the entire kill team before escaping. Severi made it his mission to hunt the Ork wherever he hid, chasing it without comprimise or rest. After forty years and nearly eighty thousand Ork kills to his name, Severi found the Warlord and took his head. Severi's prized chain-claymore had been kept as a trophy by the Ork and 'customised'. Rather than destroying the weapon, Severi stripped off the Ork mechanisms, replaced them with a more powerful Imperial engine, and retoothed the chains with the teeth of the Warlord, dipped in adamantium. Since then, the weapon has been anathema to Orks who refer to it in hushed voices as 'Da Gobsplitta'."

Immediately upon receiving the fluff, one of the players calculated the OpD (Ork per Day) count of Severi. Then attempted to work out how to beat it. Players, amirite?

Unless my numbers are off, a little under five and a half Orks per day, right?

Around that ballpark, yeah. Not htat impressive, but factor in transit times and the like and it adds up.

I like the idea of Gobsplitta but I have trouble with the idea that is what the Deathwatch would call it. "The Vengeance of Severi" or something around that level of formality would be more in line with the existing relics. I'd also vote for the Arrow to be a special assignment if only because of its huge range compared to a normal grenade (that and it can be used with an astartes targeter).

Overall, good work!

Decessor said:

Thanks!

The Deathwatch are keeping the name for the Relic that the Orks themselves fear. When introducing it to the game, I put in a fair amount of ceremony and the like, and my players are responding to it with the due reverance that any relic deserves (other than the jokes that the Black Templar assault marine that has requisitioned it will have his own teeth knocked out to replace the ork ones if he breaks the chain )

With the overwhelming percentage of people going the N/A for Arrow of Rama req-wise, I'm going with the flow. The Arrow of Rama is now req N/A.

I'd probably also make it Famed or Hero Renown.

Kshatriya said:

Could just be me, but I don't see much point in putting a Renown requirement on a weapon that you can only get by a Watch Captain (or even Commander) saying you can use it. I mean, the Stasis and Vortex Grenades, which also have Requisition of N/A, have Renown requirements of N/A.