Hi everybody! I've been looking through the forums about 21 pages back to see if there were an answer to this question I have, but I didn't find one that directly addresses it. I see there's 91 pages of threads to look through…forgive me but I'm not going to look through all 91 of them.

Anyway, I want to create standard power weapons that aren't in the books (power axes, spears, halberds, etc). Seems pretty straightforward, take a weapon and slap the Power Field special rule on it and done, ya? Except the Power Field special rule mentions extra damage and armour pen values, but doesn't specify how much to add. It says instead that these values have already been included in the stats for the available power weapons. Well that's great, but how do I know how much extra damage and armour pen to add to make my power weapon?

So I looked at the differences in stats between power weapons and their primitive cousins, and compared the differences in damage and pen. I also read the errata entry on Mono weapons and deactivated power weapons. Here are some stats for comparison:

Sword: 1D10 R, Pen 0
Short Sword: 1D10-1 R, Pen 0
Bastard Sword: 1D10+1 R, Pen 1
Great Sword: 2D10 R, Pen 2

Power Blade: 1D10+3 R, Pen 6
Serpentine: 1D10+2 R, Pen 6
Power Sword: 1D10+5 R, Pen 6
Power Longsword: 1D10+6 R, Pen 6

Okay, so from the evidence presented so far it's safe to say that the extra damage provided by Power Field varies, but the armour pen is pretty consistently raised to a flat 6. The differences in base damage could come from the blades themselves--as in, they keep some extra damage even when the power field is off. After all, it's illustrated all throughout the books already that not all primitive blades are created equal. Fine, that makes sense, so maybe there's a flat damage bonus of somewhere from +1 to +5, dependent on the individual weapon. Seems straightforward enough.

But then we get some strange fellows, like:

Axe: 1D10+1 R, Pen 0
Great Axe: 2D10 R, Pen 2
Omnissian Axe: 2D10+5 E, Pen 6

Hammer: 1D10+1 I, Pen 0
Great Hammer: 2D10 I, Pen 2
Thunder Hammer: 2D10+4 E, Pen 10

Nemesis Force Sword: 1D10+2 E, Pen 2
Nemesis Force Halberd: 1D10+3 E, Pen 2
Nemesis Daemonhammer: 2D10+5 E, Pen 8
Nemesis Falchions: 1D10+1 E, Pen 2
Nemesis Warding Stave: 1D10+1 I, Pen 0

Now I get that these are exceptional weapons with different properties from standard power weapons, for whom the Power Field rule may be an abstraction of some other property of the weapon. Still…

So my question(s) is(are), does this issue get addressed in one of the other 40k RP games? What solutions have you come up with in your games? Thanks for your time!

Force Swords aren't Power weapons, they're something else entirely. And the Nemesis weapons are made for Astartes, I believe, being from the Grey Knights arsenal.

I'd say your initial observations seems pretty right. Original weapon damage +3, Increase Pen to 6.

Thanks for the quick reply!

Darth Smeg said:

Yeah, I know Force weapons are different from Power weapons in both the tabletop and DH fluff and rules. And I know that Nemesis weapons are made for the Grey Knights, though I've heard they don't work the same as normal Force weapons due to the strange nature of their make and how they interact with the Grey Knights' psychic powers (also strange and not well explained in my opinion). I listed them to display the differences in stats of weapons with the Power Field rule, in the interest of comparison and contrast. I was thinking, "Well these weapons have the Power Field rule, technically making them power weapons as far as the rules are concerned, right? So how come these 'power weapons' don't have higher damage and Pen 6?" I answered that question with "Well the Power Field rule doesn't mean these are actual power weapons with a field, so maybe that's just to represent the higher quality and arcane make of the metals in the weapons, and make it so that power weapons can't just sunder them."

At that point the question(s) I was asking myself was(were), "Do I want to alter the Power Field special rule to make a weapon damage +3/pen 6? Or do I want to just use that for creating Munitorum standard power weapon stats from Primitive stats of the same type?"

I chose the latter. I'll probably draw up stats for all the primitive weapons in the CRB, and deal with anything else on a case-by-case basis. Thanks!

Well, "normal" Force weapons (if there is such a thing) do not have the Power Field quality (Inquisitors Handbook, 188). And the nemesis-weapons of the Grey Gnights are very peculiar indeed, so I would not use these for any sort of comparison.