Hi there,

I was wondering, does damage from the bio-lightning & Fire bolt psychic powers ignore armor?

Instinctively, I would say yes and threat does powers like "fire damage" but I'm not sure and I can't seem to find the answer.

Thanks in advance

It's not always abou realism, sometimes it has to be about balance. In the describing texts neither FIre Bolt nor Bio-Lightning mentions that the damage is not reduced by armour, so I would have to say that armour does reduce the damage. On a side note, though, any Pyromancy power that inflicts damage might also set the target on fire, in accordance with the rules on page 210, and the damage you suffer from being on fire is not reduced by armour.

EDIT: On second thought, it would be realistic that additional layers of material between you and fire would reduce the risk and severity of burns, and different materials have different conductivity, but I suppose it all comes down to the actual nature of the lightning and the fire, which isn't really clear from the descriptions.

Armour should be taken into account...

EDIT: On second thought, it would be realistic that additional layers of material between you and fire would reduce the risk and severity of burns, and different materials have different conductivity, but I suppose it all comes down to the actual nature of the lightning and the fire, which isn't really clear from the descriptions.

Just don't think about how a guy in a hermetically sealed power armour suffers the same burns from a firebomb as a guy wearing a t-shirt... it only hurts ...

Sometimes you need to over ride a generally accurate rule on the fly because it doesn't make sense in the specific situation (burning and power armour). Go ahead and do that.

On the other hand, being in Powered Armour doesn't make you immune to heat (although 40K power armour is nicely temperature resistant). If the fire is generating more heat than your enviromental system can handle then you'll boil inside your armour even if it isn't breached. In Victor Milan's CLD, a bunch of essentially 40K Penal troops taunt the guys in power armour handling them about the deaths of "power armour heros" on a previous planet. The locals knocked them down with shoulder launched missiles and kept the crippled, but unbreached suits down while the set them on fire and roasted them alive.

Hi there,

I was wondering, does damage from the bio-lightning & Fire bolt psychic powers ignore armor?

Instinctively, I would say yes and threat does powers like "fire damage" but I'm not sure and I can't seem to find the answer.

Thanks in advance

this is actually a good question, because as it stands Bio Lightning isn't all to powerful, essentially it doesn't really seem to take off as an offensive power despite being

a 14 threshold, other powers in the same threshold range can do way more then BL, even though you could hit multiple targets against it doesn't seem all that powerful unless you get unnatural willpower. Am I missing something? because all I can r eally see it as is an auto-gun that can really mess up your day on a 9.

Hi there,

I was wondering, does damage from the bio-lightning & Fire bolt psychic powers ignore armor?

Instinctively, I would say yes and threat does powers like "fire damage" but I'm not sure and I can't seem to find the answer.

Thanks in advance

this is actually a good question, because as it stands Bio Lightning isn't all to powerful, essentially it doesn't really seem to take off as an offensive power despite being

a 14 threshold, other powers in the same threshold range can do way more then BL, even though you could hit multiple targets against it doesn't seem all that powerful unless you get unnatural willpower. Am I missing something? because all I can r eally see it as is an auto-gun that can really mess up your day on a 9.

Unless you're going a medic-Psyker, Biomancy seems to find its niche in versatility, rather than straight up power. Bio-Lightning is the Biomancer's offensive spell. It's not as powerful as some Telekinetic spells, or Pyromancy spells, but it's better than nothing, and hell, at higher ranks can still hit pretty hard (my last session, my Psyker managed to do approximately the equivalent damage of a plasma cannon with a Bio Lightning attack, even taking pen values into account).

Overall though Biomancy's biggest advantage (aside from Seal Wounds and Regeneration) is its ability to do a LOT, rather than the ability to do one thing really WELL.

....That said, I personally might allow Bio Lightning to ignore primitive armors as long as they're metal. But that'd be a house rule, more than anything.

Bio-Lightning also automatically hits with all its bolts, which is rather nice and not something you'll see on an auto-gun attack in many situations. And the damage scales with the Psykers WPB, which those pesky Psykers tend to boost rather high.

A somewhat related question is why the pyromancy and telekinetics powers require WP tests to hit (after the power was successfully manifested). Personally we changed this in out House Rules .