I wanted to make a thread where we could index the current unresolved rules issues that the FAQ doesn't cover. Two for me so far:

-Clarification on the aligned status of archetypes that start as aligned. If you see the other thread you know what I mean.

-What's the ammo capacity on a stand-alone (i.e. normal) Q'sal Crystal Caster?

Pile 'em on, folks!

-If a demon weapon is rolled as a Gift of the Gods, what type of weapon is it and what is the Binding Strength?

- Using Psychic Powers from Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader, Deathwatch, and Only War in Black Crusade. There are some Powers in common in these Rulebooks that are also included in Black Crusade. Just one example (although there are several) is Precognition. What is the rationale for including in Black Crusade some of the Powers in the other books while excluding the rest?

- Guidelines for treating Gear craftsmanship that is not a Ranged Weapon, Melee Weapon, or Armour.

- Should players see the Characteristics/Skills/Talents/Traits/Gear etc. of Adversaries?

- Can you use Infamy Points at Character Creation to obtain Gear from Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader, Deathwatch, and Only War?

- Do Only War characters that reach the Corruption threshold and become Black Crusade characters 1) retain the Aptitude system for Advances, 2) retain it in parallel to the Alignment system now in effect, or 3) use both?

- When Only War characters become Black Crusade characters, what is the Alignment count? i.e., do they start their Alignment counts all at 0 and only from that point onwards increase Alignment counts based on Advances, or do the previous Advancements count towards Alignment?

@Quaia

- if there is stated in the description of the item, that good or better craftsmanship vershion of the item, does something better, then use the description. Otherwise it's just pretty version of the item. Maybe weights less or is generally smaller.

- I think they could if they pass apropriate knowledge test, first time they meet the adversary. daemonology for daemons, xenos for xenos, beast for beasts, imperial guard for guardsmen, adeptus astartes for space marines, psykers for psykers etc. You can add +10 to test for each, encounter with the enemy. The more DoS, the more info they get.

- if your gm allows it, and thinks of avalibility for items from deathwatch. I think extremely rare is a good start for most of them.

- they are now disciples of the gods, so they should use mechanics from BC

- ask your GM. I would say, they dont count, just like starting advances from archetypes.

Hot shot las-gun ammo quantity. We couldn't find it in any book.

Qaia said:

Different power balance, different writers, different page space.

Qaia said:

That's already answered in the book. Page 146.

Qaia said:

All of these are up to the GM. Black Crusade doesn't assume you transfer characters from Only War (as BC was written before Only War, and you create characters in the system from stratch), same as it has no rules for transfering DH/RT/DW characters into BC.

In my opinion: if you want to play a sister-system character in BC, make the character from stratch using the BC system and archetypes. For Only War characters then the Renegade is probably a good starting point.

Terraneaux said:

H.B.M.C. said:

Good enough for me.

In Tome of Fate, under the Magus Supremus trait/ability for the Sorcerer of Q'Sal it says,

"The Magister Immaterials of Q'Sal are renowned for their control over the fickle powers of the warp. Rolls on the Psychic Phenomena table do not affect the Magister Immaterial, although those around him may still be affected, unless the roll causes Perils of the Warp. The Magister Immaterial may also spend an Infamy point to either reroll the result on the Psychic Phenomena Table, accepting the new result as final, or decide who (allies, NPCs, and/or enemies) are affected by the result . The Magister Immaterial must be able to see an individual to affect them in this manner"

Now I ST/GM a campaign that has a player in it that maintains that the grammer in this quote does in fact support his move to slap an enemy with a Peril of the Warp that he manifested. His arguement is that in the second half of the ability it is an " or " statement which means that the entire first half (the reroll of the Warp Phenomena) is irrelavent for the purpose of perils.

Both he and I realize that as the ST/GM I have veto powers that extend to, "NO the rules work THIS way not THAT way!" And both of us realize that this could possibly be a game breaker decision when it comes to game balance and enjoyment of the game. What is your opinion on how this ability works? Does it in fact allow him to smack someone with a Peril of the Warp at the cost of an Infamy point? And if so does it allow him to decide on who is affected?

Minion #Q said:

Spend an Infamy point to either "reroll the result on the Psychic Phenomena Table" or "decide who (allies, NPCs, and/or enemies) are affected by the result". It's refering to the result on the Phenomena table. A specific Peril is not an result on the Phenomena table. You cannot affect someone with "Roll on the Perils of the Warp table".

In other words, it must be a Phenomena you affect someone else with. Perils do not apply. The fact that the Magister cannot avoid a Peril himself makes it pretty clear he cannot decide who it affects anyway.

Plasma Weapons in BC need clarification as to whether Overheat is affected by reliability. Current wording causes Poor, Common and Good quality plasma weapons to be functionally identical, and even Best Quality suffers from 10x the automatic-miss range of other weapons, as Reliable renders other weapons capable of jamming on 00 only.

A side-issue caused by this in both BC and Only War [which has the same rules on overheating and quality/reliability] is that unless attempting to obtain a Best Quality version, plasma weapons are easier to acquire logistically than any weapon of Rare availability.

Is Combi-weapons having identical availability to standard bolt-weapons intended? This could be the case, as one starts with bolters if a legionaire, making another 'extremely rare' acquisition burdensome enough?

Are Rune Weapons always Near-Unique? While the sword and shield were given availability, the sidebar explaining that any weapon could be one gives no indication of the change in availability: a regular sword becomes near-unique, but what of an already-ex.rare Bolter?

Regarding Legacy Weapon sets: Is the set specifically both weapons, or is either allowed?

For example, if matching two pistols; is using a single pistol at a time breaking the legacy? If not, would using a single one of the set along with a weapon of a different type [such as pairing a pistol better suited to side-arm duty with a power-weapon in the other hand] do so? Is using just one with a different offhand weapon [following all the two-weapon rules regarding a non-legacy dual-wield of course] allowed?

Does the Legacy of Pain crippling effect become shocking if the weapon gains the Vicious ability later on, or do they instead stack?

Spend an Infamy point to either "reroll the result on the Psychic Phenomena Table" or "decide who (allies, NPCs, and/or enemies) are affected by the result". It's refering to the result on the Phenomena table. A specific Peril is not an result on the Phenomena table. You cannot affect someone with "Roll on the Perils of the Warp table".

Grammer works a specific way. This is pretty clear. So lets do an order of operations.

"The Magister Immaterials of Q'Sal are renowned for their control over the fickle powers of the warp. Rolls on the Psychic Phenomena table do not affect the Magister Immaterial, although those around him may still be affected, unless the roll causes Perils of the Warp.

Full stop; The Magister is immune to his phenomena but not perils. I think everyone agreas to that. Moving on…

"The Magister Immaterial may also spend an Infamy point to either reroll the result on the Psychic Phenomena Table, accepting the new result as final, "

This option clearly only affects Phenomena not perils.

"or decide who (allies, NPCs, and/or enemies) are affected by the result . The Magister Immaterial must be able to see an individual to affect them in this manner"

Now this part here is the importent part. Since it starts with an or we can completly ignore the first part of the sentence. Which leaves us with.

"The Magister Immaterials of Q'Sal are renowned for their control over the fickle powers of the warp. Rolls on the Psychic Phenomena table do not affect the Magister Immaterial, although those around him may still be affected, unless the roll causes Perils of the Warp. The Magister Immaterial may also spend an Infamy point to decide who (allies, NPCs, and/or enemies) are affected by the result. The Magister Immaterial must be able to see an individual to affect them in this manner"

Now that we have removed the confusing, and unnecesary, part of the paragraph you can clearly see that as writen the ability allows the magister to choose who and how many of them are affected by the RESULT which could be either a peril or a phenomena.

P.S. This is posibly the most broken thing i have seen yet in a verry broken system. I'm curious to know if it was intended to work the way they worded it or i they just had a brain fart.

I agree that the Magister can keep perils away from himself (and possibly his allies) at the cost of an Infamy Point. However, I disagree about it being broken.

Firstly, the Peril can't affect anyone it wouldn't affect anyway. Any result up to 46 on the table would merely be negated - these results target noone but the psyker.

Secondly, consider that the Magister is an Unbound psyker, meaning that whenever he rolls unfettered doubles, there's a pretty good chance for perils (65+). His ability thus provides for a certain safety net, but if he abuses this to spam Unfettered or even Pushed powers, he'll be going through a lot of Infamy Points fairly quickly. Infamy Points that could otherwise be used for +1d5 DoS on a random test.

And thirdly, remember that this is an advanced archetype. Not only would other PCs start with some other interesting abilities, but you essentially forego any starting-game alignment gambits like getting a few Sound Constitutions before they become cross-aligned.

It would make no sense that the Magister would be able to spend an Infamy point to reroll a Psychic Phenomena result when he can just spend an Infamy point to decide who a Perils of the Warp result affects, as the latter means he could decide it doesn't affect himself making the first part of Magus Supremus moot.

It's obviously a case of bad writing. It should say "or decide who (allies, NPCs, and/or enemies) are affected by the Psychic Phenomena result". To me it's pretty obvious you may decide to use the Infamy point before moving on over to the Perils of the Warp table, not after.

If you could spend an Infamy point to avoid a Perils (by deciding it doesnt affect you and only your enemies) it would be like the talent Warp Lock, but you don't take damage and it's usable Infamy bonus amount of times per session instead of just 1, and your enemies are effected, and you can keep on sustaning and using powers. In other words, about 1000 times better than a tier 3 talent. Screw rerolls, give me that.

I always interpreted the magistar as having a feature that read.

01-75 on psychic phenomena, nothing happens, and if he has 76-100 he rolls on perils of the warp.

If he rolled on perils on the warp, he can spend an infamy point to reroll on perils of the warp or he can spend an infamy point to determine who is affected.

being able to reroll the result is very good, since it might be possible that the magister doesn't want the particular effect to happen on any nearby creatures ( only allies nearby, or their might be enemoes that are able to benefit from the effect of the perril of the warp) but is hoping to hit an enemy with something nasty.

19-24 might not be the best thing to give to an opponent who might benefit from the added corruption or there might only be allies nearby

56-58 is not a good thing if there is only 1 grey knight terminator in the room, so maybe rerolling and hoping to able to stun him for several rounds might be a good idea, well worth of an infamypoint. ( took a grey knight as a fiercy and powerfull opponent, i don't know the rules for grey knights and it might be they are immune to this, but i think everyone can think of some other scary baddy ( or is it goody) that is not immune to perils of the warp)

having the option to reroll can be a chance to live in the later example.

also about the option being broken, keep in mind that players have a limited supply of infamy points per session and that the other options for using infamy points might be very usefull, ( fatigue, rerolling, healing , bonus on tests, extra successes).

i admit that it has a higher lifesaving-rating then most other options, but as long as it's mostly lifesaving, i m ok with that, players don't like to die, and think of all the funny things that can happen by having a greater deamon posses a kitten. now that i think of it, you might want to reroll that result, because if the kitten dies, there is a greater deamon standing next to you.

You may have limited infamy points per session, but a tier 3 talent that's specifically for avoiding results on the phenomena/perils tables is 1/session and you take 1d5 damage and can't use powers/sustain anything for a turn. The Magister's special ability isn't supposed to be 1000 times better than that, as previously stated. I.e. you must be reading it wrong.

I reread the text in the book and you might be right, i misread it.

the magister is not affected by psychic phenomena, unless it's perils of the warp. perils of the warp affect him like any normal psycher.

so my current interpretation is:

when rolling on the psychic phenomena table, the magister is immune to effect 1-74, although others might still be affected.

he has the possibility to reroll on the 6.2 table if he dislikes the result ( result of 75+ by example) OR decide who is affected by the result rolled by spending an infamy point.

apparently the perils of the warp table is never referenced in the magisters text. so if he rolls a 65+ ( for a result of 75) he cannot burn an infamy point to decide who is affected, he either spends an infamy point to reroll, or takes his chances on the perils of the warp table ( 6.3) and cannot change anything.

This means that he can burn an infamy point in 64% of the cases ,if he is not sustaining any power, to have his enemies be affected by the result he rolled on table 6.2. ( and if what i read on the fora is correct,most psychers have at least one ongoing affect they are maintaining in combat, further adding a +10 to his rolls, meaning 46 %chance of perils in which case he can spend an infamy point to reroll, having again 46% chance of perils).

the warplock talent lets you ignore a result on the 6.2 table, you have to pay for it with d5 wounds and no powers for 1 round, but ignore is 36+% better better then rerolling, since the reroll has 36+% chance of being perils of the warp ( which has effects worse then d5 wounds and not being able to use psychic powers for 1 turn). It also does not require an infamypoint.

I know that we have different opinions on the price of an infamypoint, i think this is a high price, but i have only recently started playing and have only got 2 infamypoints available atm . towards the end of the story i can see that having 6-8 infamypoints per session gives more leeway in the usage of those infamypoints, but i assume that at that point you encounter more dangerous situations and will need more infamypoints to stay alive.

While it might be somewhat powerfull to be able to affect your enemies with result 11-74 of the 6.2 table, you are not really sure what you will get, and have a high chance of getting hit yourself by table 6.3 which is alot worse, oh sure you can reroll, but have a 36% of getting hit by the 6.3 tabel anyways.

the "usable" effect on table 6.2 are not that many,

18-20 forget something trivial( borderline usefull)

33-35 no run or charge actions

36-38 Gain fear1 for 1 round and 1 corruptionpoint

42-44 Ag+30 test or be knocked down

48-50 Ag+10 test or be knocked down

54-56 test against fear 1

57-59 D10 meter falling damage

60-62 T-test or be deafened ( marginally usefull)

63-65 knocked down, d5-T wounds and fear2 test

66-68 WP-10 or gain d5 corruption

69-71 ranged weapons jam

72-74 frenzy for a round an WP-10 or suffer d5 corruption

for a total of 39 of "usefull results", 25 "useless" but cinematic results, and 36 Perils of the warpif he is not sustaining powers.

compared to a nightlord who can spend infamypoints to get a fear rating up to 4 for an entire session i don't thin kit's that broken.

But i do agree that he must choose to reroll on the table 6.2 before rolling on table 6.3 if he would have a result of 75+ on table 6.2. And i am convinced that he cannot choose targets for table 6.3.

Yes, this time you got it right. Good on you.

Still there are others who believe a magister can spend an infamy point to ignore perils and decide who it affects. Ridiculous.

As for the Night Lord, at 80 infamy you'd need to spend all your session's infamy points to get Fear 4. That means no rerolls and other very useful things infamy points grant you. Sure, fear is powerful, but there's a lot of fearless enemies out there. Especially when you're at 80+ infamy. And the fearful ones are probably not too dangerous to a warband with 80 infamy anyway.

Kiton said:

I've seen this around a few times, and I don't understand the logic. The rules as written make it clear that reliable works with overheat.

Reading the overheats rule: "Weapons with this special quality never jam, and jam result indicates they overheat instead" (the grammer is that of the book).

Reading the rules on reliable: "Reliable weapons only jam on an unmodified hit role of 00"

So any role of 91-99 on a reliable weapon is not a jam result, only a 00 is a jam result for a reliable weapon. Therefore it only overheats on a 00. Seems pretty clear.

nope, because the default overheat range (91-100) is wider than the default jam (from 94 or 96? to 100)

Does crippling stack if a target is hit multiple times with it?

If you stick someone with an Axon Razor, it does no damage but inflicts Crippling 5. If they get stuck with it a couple more times, does that increase to Crippling 10 and 15? With a weapon that only inflicts a small number of crippling, that's not too bad, but what about when you make a daemon weapon with a high willpower that gets Crippling 8? Or worse, what about something like an autogun or stubber with crippling and impossibly sharp? You could have a relatively low damage weapon that sneaks through a few points of damage at a time and adds up to a downright insane amount of damage on a full action. Crippling 5 and Warp on a daemon possessed stubber? Shoot a Plaguemarine on full auto and he doesn't dodge a bit (since Ag is his dump stat) and suddenly he's under the effect of Crippling 60?

As a player I cackle with glee, while as a GM I recoil in horror.

zolik said:

Now I'm confused as to why part of that last line even exists, specifically the "would overheat if it would normally jam" when it would already overheat for that roll.

Guess my group has always just played that last line taking precedence over the earlier one as to when overheating occurs.

As i understand the rule:

Overheats: "….An unmodified roll to hit of 91 or higher causes the weapon to Overheat…Weapons with the quality never jam; and jam result indicates they overheat instead."

As i understand they overheat when the roll is higher than 91 and in ADDITION to this it overheats automatically when something would cause it to jam, for example psychic pehnomena, psy power, etc.

reliable quality only lowers the possibility for jamming, but jamming never effect plasma weapons anyway so it doesn-t effect it

in my interpretation

It is as Zolik explains. Jam and Overheat are different things entirely. The only things they have in common are:

A} Both involve the results of a die roll

B} Things that force a Jam instead cause Overheat in weapons with that rule [this mostly applies to psyker powers that screw with weapons, really]

Other than that, things that affect Jamming don't actually affect Overheat.

Where this causes additional problems is in quality and accuracy. First because unlike melee, or Ork or Astartes Ranged Craftsmanships, If you put Poor, Common and Good quality Plasma weapons right next to eachother, the only difference you might find is exterior decorations. Nothing else. Not Damage, not Accuracy, not magazine-size or weight or anything. They are all exactly the same, and exactly equal in how likely they are to blow your arm off, and how much damage they do to said arm when they vent.

Additionally: once you've xp under your belt, chances are modifiers and aiming are bringing you over 90% accuracy, or more, pre-penalties, if you're actually focusing on your BS. With a Reliable weapon, you will only jam/miss on 00. Unless you're using a weapon with Overheat. Even a Best Craftsmanship Overheat weapon is going to, by its wording, automiss on 91+, not just 00 like any other weapon becomes. For many characters, this is a significantly greater chance of missing than with any other weapon type.