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Had a e-mail today which I actually had to think about!

The question was "If a character equipped with a Book of St. Lucius is elected the target of the Deathleapers "It's after me!" special rule, do models using the Book's effect use the Leadership on the Characters profile or the altered Leadership?"

For reference:

Book of St. Lucius
Any friendly unit with a model within 6" may use the bearer's unmodified Leadership value for any Morale checks or Pinning tests it is required to take.

and

It's after me!
Nominate a single enemy character at the beginning of the game as the victim of Deathleaper's psychological attacks. Roll a D3. Whilst Deathleaper is still alive, that model's Leadership is reduced by the result rolled

Now, initially I thought "Herp Derp Derp it uses the models Leadership on the profile Derp!", but then I remembered that modifiers are actually defined in the rulebook, and that the Deathleapers ability is not a "modifier". I suppose it is the same situation as a PBS vs. Stubborn.

What are all ya'll thoughts? I know, from a RaI viewpoint, you would use the Leadership as printed on the Profile of the Character with the Book, but I have the feeling that RaW it is not, and that you use the reduced leadership for the Book's effect.

I'd vote that the Book's leadership is unmodified.

Me too.

It's most certainly a modifier. Heck it's even conditional - the deathleaper being alive.

I'd say the model bearing the book gets it's LD reduced, but the book granting the unmodified LD.

As far as i can tell, both RAW and RAI point towards it.

Spellbound wrote:It's most certainly a modifier. Heck it's even conditional - the deathleaper being alive.

It most certainly ISN'T when you see that the BRB actually defines what a modifier is.

Gwar! wrote:

Spellbound wrote:It's most certainly a modifier. Heck it's even conditional - the deathleaper being alive.

It most certainly ISN'T when you see that the BRB actually defines what a modifier is.

I personally disagree with this assessment, which is funny because in the INAT we have 'Weaken Resolve' working against Stubborn units for JUST this reason, but I was actually out-voted on that one.


While the Rulebook does define what Ld modifiers are, it doesn't say that the modifier has to be called a "modifier" in order for it to be a modifier.

And more importantly, the Book of St. Lucius doesn't say that it ignores Morale check 'modifiers' (which is what is defined in the rulebook), it just says you use the bearer's "unmodified Leadership".

So whether or not the Deathleaper's ability is a 'modifier' doesn't matter, because without a doubt the Deathleaper's ability is some sort of modification of the bearer's Ld, which is exactly what the Book of St. Lucius ignores.


So my personal opinion is that the RAW dictate that the Book of St. Lucius allows units to use the bearer's unmodified Ld value for Morale and Pinning tests.

This would be more fun as a vote. :( I second Yakface.

Yup, I'd be going with unmodified Ld as well.

Hmm...I tend to think that stubborn RAW ignores PBS weaken resolve, but RAI it shouldn't. I am going to go ahead and apply the same logic for this situation as well

A modifier is something that changes a stat value and the new result is dependant on the initial value, that's how I see it as being defined in the BRB, so plus/minus/multiplication/division are all forms of modifiers, however simply setting the characteristic to a set value such as 7 would not be a modifier.

Given that deathleaper subtracts 3 from a models Leadership I would most certainly consider it a modifier, and thus, not relevant when using the Book of St. Lucius.

Gwar! wrote:Had a e-mail today which I actually had to think about!

Onoez!



The unmodified leadership would be used because lowering it is modifying it, right? At least if you use the definitition for modify as in to change something. They always leave stuff out of the rules remember, but it plainly says right there that the leadership would be unmodified. So I think it should not be changed at all, no raising it or lowering it.

Yerp. I agree with Yak's assessment. The Book works just fine and you would use their unmodified Ld.

Beast wrote:Yerp. I agree with Yak's assessment. The Book works just fine and you would use their unmodified Ld.

I agree with all the agreeing to date.

I ran in to this last week when playing SoB. The way I look at it is there are two types of effects that change leadership.

Replacement Effects: Normally the 'pariah' effect that states the model's leadership is at 'x'

Modifiers: These come from combat or other sources that reduce or increase model's Ld value from a static starting point.

I know RAW there is not a formal definition that distinguishes between the two, but in practice they are the categories that stat changes fall into. Since Deathleaper falls into the second of these, I used my book the entire game for Leadership tests on my Cannonness.

While I know there is supposed to be a little wiggle room in the rules, I wish GW would tighten up their language/rules on some of this.

Is deathleaper's ability similar to the cluxeus assassin? Because in that case, its not modified, just changing the leadership to 7.

So in that case its changed to 7, then unmodified by modifiers.


If its modifying leadership, then no the book doesnt allow it.

carmachu wrote:Is deathleaper's ability similar to the cluxeus assassin?

The ability was posted at the start of the thread. No, it's different to the Culexis' ability.

I agree with Yak that anything that changes a stat other than "It is now X" is a modifier, and thus would be ignored by the book.
It is possible that GW wrote it poorly enough that it does not strictly have that effect, but then I don't think that they are specific enough that one could then make a decision either way. In other words, if taking a very specific approach to their rules on the question, there doesn't seem to be a definition of a modifier other than a number that changes the stat based on its original value. Maybe there is somewhere else that I am missing though, but without that, one seems forced to accept that a modifier is just something that changes a stat based on its original value.

Why would weaken resolve work against stubborn units... that's just stupid.

Sounds like a great idea to me. They're stubborn, not fearless.

Nurglitch wrote:Sounds like a great idea to me. They're stubborn, not fearless.

Ok, let me clarify that. Weaken Resolve should not work against stubborn units for morale checks, because they ignore negative modifiers for these checks.

For other LD tests such as pinning checks, Weaken Resolve should work just fine against stubborn units.

Deathleaper changes your Ld by d3, just as the PBS changes your Ld by the number of Sanctioned Psykers.

The unmodified Ld seems to be referred to ignoring the modifiers you have because of various effects such as losing combat and such. These are listed as modifiers specifically and there are rules and equipment that stops these modifiers.

Though, we have to also realize that a change of something is a modification of something. Yes, the authors use different terminology, but we can not use that as the basis of arguments for their intentions. The intention of stubborn and the book are to use the models' unchanged, unmodified, undifferenciated leadership. They all mean the same thing and should be interperated as the same thing.

There are other uses for both the deathleaper and PBS against these types of units. PBS can shoot S9 blasts and the deathleaper is still an upgraded lictor.

I disagree. I don't feel there's as much room for semantic interpretation as with the Stubborn rule.

Stubborn specifically mentions negative leadership modifiers ... thus allowing some dictionary-fu as to what a "modifier" is defined as within the 40K rulebook.

The Book is written as "unmodified leadership." Now are you going to search for a GW definition of "unmodified" to prove that Deathleaper can alter a Ld value without modifying it? That isn't even RAI, that's a rules change based on reading comprehension problems and an over-reliance on tenous Dakka / INAT precendence, spearheaded by the same user.

A modifier is a (+/-N), basically an integer. If something gives you +x or -y to some characteristic, then its modifying that characteristic because the modifier is added to or subtracted from a basic value.

The Pariah Soulless (or Rites of Battle) rule, by contrast, replaces the original value. In other words to replace a characteristic value is a different function from modifying a characteristic value.

Modification
x +/- y = m | x is the basic value, y is the modifier, and m is the modified value.

Where Weaken Resolve reduces a unit's Leadership by the number of psykers in the unit, it modifies that unit's Leadership, rather than replacing it.

If the unit has Ld8 and three psykers in the Psyker Battle Squad cast Weaken Resolve, then the following is true:

x = 8, y = 3, m = 5.

Therefore Stubborn units, like Fearless units, are not affected by Weaken Resolve*. Pie them instead.

So, willydstyle, now that I look at it more closely, it turns out that while it sounded great, the truth of it is different.

*At least in those situations that Stubborn applies to, such as morale checks rather than all leadership tests.