Through a series of unfortunate events, a player character in the game I'm in has lost a hand.

The scenerio was: combat tech priest with power sword mechadendrites, the players were ordered to take him down, but not to kill him, and so one of the players decided to use non-lethal method, but is a pistol dueller, and an unarmed combatant. To the point, his first attack got blocked by a power sword. He has black bone bracing and best quality carapace. How would you rule this?

(We ended up rolling a D%, 75% chance of loss, then he took the critical damage of 8 rending to the arm.)

I've had a similar situation where a Kroot attempted to get a taste of a man with a power sword. I said in that case the Power Sword just "erases" the limb (or beak), they are stunned for 1 round and gain 1d5 fatigue, but they are otherwise unaffected due to the Power Sword just cleanly and instantly removing the offending appendage.

I disagree with the above assesment, read Power Field again: Weapons with the Warp Weapon Quality and Natural Weapons are immune to this effect. Your firsts, mouth or other appendage you use to hit another person is a natural weapon.

Furthermore, only way to lose a limb is via Crital Hit. You owe your player a new limb.

Indeed - if power weapons were meant to cut people in half they would have put it into the rules. As has been said the only way to lose a limb or organ is through ciritcal damage. Give that PC a new arm!

>Give the PC a new arm.

I am not the DM.

I am the player who lost the arm.

I shall take it up with the GM in the next session, and we'll come to an amicable decision in the end.

I'm not mad, but I dislike the way the rule discrepancy ran, it seemed ineffecient.

People from another forum I frequent were sitting on the side of fluff and going "Damned right he lost his hand." So it's interesting to get the perspective from you guys. Thanks.

I'll read the Power entry more thoroughly.

Thanks for your help.

The problem with going by fluff would be - ANY shot the head would instantly kill you, power weapons wouldn't need to roll for damage as theyd cut stuff in half, void battles would take days to run their course, the warp would instantly annihilate humans upon contact with it, etc…

Basically the rules are there to provide a fair and supposedly balanced play experience for all players, so your GM deciding to modify the rules to your detriment was a bad decision.

I fully get you, I'll take it up with those involved.

The GM wasn't sure what to do, and another player did all the rolls and basically succeeded a real life blather check. What's done is done, I'm fine to carry on with the lost limb, after all cybernetics exist in setting, and the character is tough enough that he survived it no issues. I will however make sure everyone knows this and I won't be here going "Halp, we cannot in to rules" again on this instance.

Cheers for your help.

I'd argue it goes like this:

If you sucessfully parry a power weapon you didn't "block" the weapon with your hand but rather countered the attack by stopping the weapon at the hilt or deflecting the swordarm / mechadendrite that swung the weapon.

Now if you want to be a little more lethal maybe you could roll a d5 minicrit on top of that but really the difficulties of fighting a weapon wielded while being unarmed is already represented by another mechanic in the book. (I forgot what exactly that is called and what it does exactly but I think it's a +20 to WS in favour of the attacker or something like that.)

Parrying unarmed against certain weapons should definitely carry a risk. Perhaps you can get that power-spear on the shaft somewhat safely, but a power-fist is a whole other story. A bigger question is usually the issue of parrying someone who IS unarmed… If your power-sword parries that very-desperate-mutant, he should probably take normal damage… or at least damage without strength bonus.

Limb loss, on the other hand, is a perfect time to get the ship's Dok to whip you up something gud'n krumpy. Think of it as an opportunity to finally get a BETTER arm. Bigger. Stronger. With three hydraulic shears instead of hands, backed by a very stable storm-field.

Similarlly, if bale-eyes are a little hard to find, you could ask the 'doctor' to set you up with some kind of archeotech flamer "gubbinz".