A situation as always puzzled me concerning bionic limbs

Most of the illustrations and stories suggest that standard bionics are large hulking things lacking in esthetics, they are massively bulky and identifiable as artificial. They also seem to be uncovered by a marines power armour. This makes a bionic very vulnerable, Now they provide an increase in toughness, but this is pretty useless in an unarmoured potion of the body. How would you remedy this, can we assume the material a bionic is made of has the same armour rating as standard power armour?

Have I missed something on how bionics work, does a hit in a bionic come of a persons wounds or is there a way to interpret damage like vehicle hits?

Well, Bionics are uncovered by armour because this is the only way to show them on tabletop modells or artworks, also they add some badassery to the specific character or the entire flavor of a chapter, i. E. Iron Hands. In the Tabletop it makes no difference, even for the WYSIWYG and you can explain it by the "fact" that these bionics are made to to fit without a power armour and are therefore even armoured the same way. The Deathwatch PNP on the other side does not include such bionics and threats them more like those bionics that are a replacement but nut shown off. The problem of a show-off bionic like a leg is, that it must be longer and bigger to actually fit with your other leg that is suited by several layers of ceramite. If you take your armour off suddenly the bionic is not symethrical to your other one. This is no problem for chapters like the Iron Hands that more or less sleep in their armours though others, more "civilised" that wear robes in their monestary would be more hindered.

But you can acutally make these bionics armoured but in this matter grant them the 8 AP withouth the TB Bonus and as long as they do not have a symethrical bionic (arm, leg) they will suffer from a -10/20 on all tests that include these two limbs.

The simple reason is that, from a model standpoint (and by extension artwork standpoint) there wouldn't be anything to see if you had bionic parts.

Beyond this affectation I don't see any reason to make it horribly complicated or a sever disadvantage.

For partially bionic Marines their Power Armour must be adjusted to acomodate it, otherwise it wouldn't be environmentally sealed. It's safe to assume that part of this includes simple, removable armour cladding for the bionic part even though this is rarely shown in the artwork.

Simple because it doesn't need to sealed or self powered, and removable so that it is not encumberance when the marine is not wearing armour (or wearing different armour.

In that way, even if the Marine changes armour the equivalent armour cladding is of neglible cost compared to the power armour itself.

The simple reason is that, from a model standpoint (and by extension artwork standpoint) there wouldn't be anything to see if you had bionic parts.

Beyond this affectation I don't see any reason to make it horribly complicated or a sever disadvantage.

For partially bionic Marines their Power Armour must be adjusted to acomodate it, otherwise it wouldn't be environmentally sealed. It's safe to assume that part of this includes simple, removable armour cladding for the bionic part even though this is rarely shown in the artwork.

Simple because it doesn't need to sealed or self powered, and removable so that it is not encumberance when the marine is not wearing armour (or wearing different armour.

In that way, even if the Marine changes armour the equivalent armour cladding is of neglible cost compared to the power armour itself.

Oops double post. Only just noticed. Sorry.

Brother Anselm said:

Brother Anselm, I had to deal with this very issue myself last night. My Iron Serpent tech-marine (a custom Iron Hands successor based on the Iron Islanders from 'A Song of Ice and Fire') has extensive bionics. Legs, lungs, both hands and an auger array. But his recently introduced battle brothers have seen none of these because he has only met them while wearing power armour from the neck down.

By the rules, any hits to bionics take away wounds. Critical hits can cause them to fail or explode. The +2 tougness bonus is rather handy at preventing that.

My take is that any art or models that depict bionics worn without armour are for aesthetic appeal and do not represent the real situation (i.e. the brothers wear armour over their bionics).