Right, yesterday I ran a trial combat with my group, to test our characters capabilities and check I had a firm grasp on the combat rules.

So we had our group of 5 players facing off against 10 heavys. Now I noticed a few things, first off, the chainsword given in the armoury deals 1d10+2 damage, but the profile given for the Heavy (pg 341) lists it as 1d10+6? I went with the latter, as it seemed more letahl (and thus, more like a chain sword).

But also, our Psyker ended up in a duel with one of the heavys, using his sword. He got away with parrying a chainsword, as there's is no quality for it. It seemed a bit wierd to me, so I've agreed with the group that Chain weapons have a 75% chance of rendering any weapons attempting to parry them useless. For the purposes of armour, we also decided that any damage dealt by a chain weapon that exceeded the Armours AP by 10 removed 1D5 of the armours AP.

Opinions on this?

For the first part, +6 includes the +4 strength bonus.

The destruct by parry rules is already there for power weapons. I can see it for chain as well but would reduce the chance.

For destroying armor, would you apply similar penalties for all weapons? It would seem bolters or just about any weapon could do the same thing. At least DH has location hits and armor to keep things separate. It all depends on how much paperwork you want to keep.

Oh yeah :/ Ooops XD

The chance of destroying melee weapons sounds about right, but for the armour:

Unless a weapon deals critical damage, it isn't really counting as having hurt the character majorly is it? It'd all be run ins, and bullet scars across the necks etc etc. As another houserule, we have players dead from critical damage have a chance of unusable armour.

Ie, suffering a semi auto combat shotgun blast and dying is bound to leave quite a dent in your armour.

Actually, the spinning of the teeth on a chain weapon would deflect the attack rather than break the weapon - you're not cutting into the object, just blocking or redirecting its path. There would be a chance, however, that the parried weapon either flies out of its wielder's hands or at least puts him off balance - a simple Ag test would suffice for that, unless the opponent has the Melee (Chain) talent as well and knows how to compensate.

There is, also, the idea that a chain weapon could be used as a swordbreaker - combine Called Shot with All-Out Attack on the enemy weapon, and a failed Parry or Dodge roll means you damage or break it (depending on quality).

The rending of weapons is a special trait that is given to Power weapons. So you may want to leave it to those weapons. If you want to have it render weapons and armor I'd limit it to those that have a Primitive quality. Modern weapons would be made of the same types of material and it would be far less likely to destroy them. Chainsaws work great on wood but not so well on a metal beam. Same principle.

As someone else pointed out the damage is 1d10+2. The other stat include the STR bonus for the heavy. I think all the NPC's already have their stat bonuses added in to make it easier on the GM.

I think you guys got that wrong. He ment 75% chance of destroying a weapon PARRYING the chainsword. Not parrying with a chainsword. That's something new

However the ability to destroy a weapon that is used to parry is an ability of Power weapons. Chainswords don't have that ability. Hence the suggestion to only have it work on Primitive weapons and lower the chance. Say 50% vs wood or other organic weapons and 25% vs metal or other inorganic primitive weapons. Helps keep chain weapons from unbalancing the field.

I have trained several historical techniques for fighting with swords and other weapons both from european medieval times and asian traditions. I'll try to export some of my experiences with fighting with metal swords to apply to chain swords. I really don't know much about fighting with axes so I'll just talk about swords. Generally speaking, a properly done parry will have the edge of your sword hit the flat side of your opponents blade. You do not put your weapon in the path of the attack, but rather you hit the attacking blade from the side so that it misses its intended spot, this is often combined with a sidestep. The best thing with doing such a parry is that it will leave your blade between your opponents blade and his body, and such in a perfect position for a counterattack. If you are not in a position to do a proper edge-to-flat parry, the next best thing is to have your opponents weapon slide at a slight angle against your blade, either towards your hilt to catch and lock his blade, or towards the top of your blade so you can let it slide away from you (the effect of this is similar to the edge-on-flat parry, but takes longer time. It is possible to just get your weapon smack in the way of the attack, but that is a sort of last resort, because it risks damaging your weapon and it puts you in a very compromised situation with your opponent still having the initiative. Still better than getting his sword in your face though.

Lets assume I have a "primitive" sword and my opponent have a chainsword. I parry an attack made against me. I think my biggest problem is not that the teeth would damage my weapon, but that my blade will be twisted/pulled away from me and towards my opponent. If I had no previous experience in how this effect worked, I would be very screwed indeed. My guard and my counterattackoptions would be ruined the first time his edge touched my blade. If I attacked and was parried pretty much the same thing would happen. My blade would be twisted away leaving me wide open for counter attacks. Given time and proper training I could probably learn to compensate for this and/or as much as possible avoid the spinning edge (maybe even benefit from it by using the momentum).

Rules suggestion: Does the talent Melee (primitive) include training for meeting fighters with chain blades? If yes, no rules need to change. If no, I'd suggest a simple -10 on all parries and attacks made against an opponent with a chained weapon, because your weapon will not behave like you expect it to. Maybe an unwieldy weapon would not get the reduction due to its weight and the offensive way in wich it is used.

I propose this rule (not tested, so number are suggestion and should be changed according to you opinion):

Whenever chain weapon is parried of used to parry there's a chance that weapons will become "locked", 50% chance for chainswords, 25% for chainaxes (add the percentage together if both attacker and defender has chain weapons, for example, if you parry a chainaxe with your chainsword there's a 25%+50%=75% chance that they'll become "locked"). If they do, attacker and defender makes opposed S test with following modifiers:

1 - Chain weapon - +10%

2 - Attacker - +10%

3 - 2-handed weapon - +10%

4 - Implanted or natural weapon - +10%

5 - Weapon does less than 1d10 damage (SB not included) - -10%

Then apply the results (note - if one of combatants lose the test and other wins, add the 1st combatant's degrees of failure to his opponent's degrees of success) :

A - Opponent wins by 5 or more degrees - the weapon is ripped out of combatans hand and flies 1d10 meters in random direction (GM should ajust the distance according to weapons weight and degree of success). If it's natural/implanted weapon combatant take 1d5+opponent's SB+3x(opponent's degrees of success above 5) damage which ignores AP to the limb(-s) which holds the weapon, if it deals at least 5 critical damage the weapon/claw/talon/etc. is spectacularly ripped of, if the limb(-s) isn't bionic target suffers Blood Loss and must succeed a WP test or spend next 1d10-TB (min 1) turn in shock (stunned).

B - Opponent wins by 3 or more degrees - your weapons is yanked from you hands. You retain the hold of it but you are put of balance - opponents attacking you gets +10 WS and you can't parry or dodge. You must spend half action at first opportunity (usually your next turn), you recover your balance when you do.

C - you win/lose by 2 or less degrees or it's a tie - you pull your weapons lose, attack is parried as normal.

If both combatants fail the test by 3/5 or more deegress, apply accordingly B/A (in this case creature with natural weapons/inplanted weapons only suffer 1d5 damage (which ignores AP)) results to both of them.

When you parry a chain weapon or parry with chain weapon, you can choose to take -20WS (-10WS in case of chainaxe) penalty to you parry test to parry without touching chain weapons "teeth" (once again, add the penalties if both attacker and defender has chainweapons), if you have Melee Weapon Training (Chain) talent reduce penalty by half.

New talent: Chain Weapon Parrying

Requirements: You must either be able to take Melee Weapon Training (Chain) talent or you had blocked a chain weapon at least 10 times.

Cost: 50XP

You reduce WS penalty for parrying Chain weapons or using them parry while avoiding touching their "teeth" by half. It means if you have both this and Melee Weapon Training (Chain) talents you take no penalty.

I know it's kinda long but I just tried cover all possible outcomes, also sorry for bad grammar.

I think it's best to handwave chain weapons: they're so iconic of this universe that you have to have them and I think the rules for them have fudged everything quite nicely and simply. If you want to be realistic, then yes the spinning teeth could wrench weapons from people's hands but if you want that then you should also incorporate the realistic penalties that will come with such a weapon to balance its advantages.

There should be a half action windup time to get the chain up to speed (it acts as a primitive club until then); if smashed by a power weapon, the chain will become part shrapnel, part flail; the mass and torque will make it very unwieldy - if it (a chainsword) masses 3x a sabre or 12x a knife, then such weapons should automatically become Fast against a chainsword, or a chainsword should drop a wieldability grade or two (unbalanced or unwieldy).

I'd say the fact that they kept it Balanced (a 6kg, one handed weapon with torque) reflects the parrying advantages of its spinning edge (attackers have to manoeuvre more to avoid the edge, on the attack or the parry) - the whole package works quite nicely and is simple.