Hello my dear 40k enthusiasts, I was hoping that you could enlighten me on a particular issue that arose during a session that I was running, so here's how it goes: The Librarian of the team had recently purchased the Rite of Sanctioning talent, eventually during one of their missions that included capturing a Tau Ethereal in a Tau controlled human world that was infested with Tyranids, they encountered a Horde of Hormagaunts. So he used Smite and he also Pushed the power and thus rolled Perils of the Warp and due to the Rite Of Sanctioning he substituted his result with Falling upwards. He calimed that the damage from both the power and the Perils of the Warp stacked up and that the damage dealt to the horde was seven times 7d10 plus 1d10 for Perils of the Wapr done to each Tyranid. I explained to him that they do not stack up and also that Hordes are regarded as a unified entity therefore his power would hit the Horde seven times and the damage dealt would be 7d10 each time to the entirety of the Horde. I do not know whether I am right or wrong but could you please help me even though it may sound a tedious question to you? I need some kind of verification in order to prevent him from protesting if he is wrong and wants to abuse the rules.

Technically, since smite is a blast weapon (It has a blast radius) it only hits a horde as many times as its blast rating (radius). If you used smite at Psy Rating 6 for instance it would cause 6 hits to the horde. Smite is not explosive and has no other special rules to give it more damage output to hordes.

As per horde rules for any of those 6 hits that cause 1 point or more of damage the horde looses a single magnitude point.

As for the perils of the warp, that is up to you. Falling damage against a horde is not really defined. if it was just a meter or two its unlikely many would get seriously hurt from a fall. So just decide on your own how many, if any, got hurt.

Psychic power effecting a horde are detailed on page 360. 'Psychic Powers used against a Horde will hit it a number of times equal to the Psy Rating used in the power, no matter what the power may be. If the psychic power affects an area, it adds an additional 1d10 hits.'

Providing it does damage it would do PR + 1D10 or 7 +1d10 from the sound of your example.

For the Falling upwards affect you could treat it as a an attack with a 2d10 radius, that potentially 2d10 magnitude. Although the damage might be limited with them dropping 1d10 meters.

A couple of other points, firstly with Rite of Sanctioning you pick one Phenomena for all Phenomena rolls not chosen each time it's rolled. Your player might have chosen Falling upwards.

Normally you wouldn't be able to use a ranged aoe psychic power in melee without (suffering a penalty for Smite especially) potentially hiting themselves. It didn't say in you example that they were specifically in melee but the fact they were effected by falling upwards suggests it was or maybe it wasn't but was within the 2d10 meters but that suggests they wouldn't get the full magnitude damage for the falling upwards or perhaps the horde was large enough that part of it could be targeted with smite without hitting the caster but that might have meanth it was only partially hitting the horde.

With PR 7 Smite would hit 7 + 1W10 Targets and it would do 7W10 DS7 dmg

Face Eater is probably correct in this case. I believe the psychic rules do state something similar.

Good Job finding that btw. Didn't have my books available when I posted last, unfortunately. In the end it was close enough I suppose.

miho said:

1W10? Why the "W"?

-K

ah ****, it should be "D" sorry, in german its W10 and so on ^^

miho said:

Neat.

I encountered this the other night, and it was PSY + d10 damage. That's a bit disappointing though that the power doesn't seem to matter. My frame of reference is Black Crusade, where Bolt of Change does dozens of times the damage of Doom Bolt (basically Smite). That said, I don't recall seeing too many attack powers in Deathwatch, so the whole thing may be moot.

ScooterinAB said:

Remember that hordes are there to allow the players to cinematically fight, not to get all uber number-crunchy-munchkin-doom-hat at the GM. A librarian firing a smite into a horde is doing a LOT more damage to it than most other characters can realistically dish out (barring maybe missile launchers or high level assault marines). As such trying to argue for more damage against the horde is a bit moot.