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Hey, haven't posted here for ages...looks more fancy nowadays.

Anyways, I'm curious as to how a Power Sword(or any Imperial power weapon for that matter) actually reacts to armour and what not.

What I mean is, does it act like a light saber and just slice through stuff, or is it more like a halfway between a regular sword and a light saber.(requiring more force to do what a light saber could)

I know light sabers and power weapons act differently(one's a laser and the other is essentially metal surrounded in electricity), but I'd just like to know if it could slice through metal as easily as a light saber does in star wars. Given, it'd depend on what metal you're talking about as well...so for example, a power sword cutting through a Tau heavy weapon, would it cut strait through with ease, or would you have to have a massive amount of foce behind it?

 

BTW, the reason I'm using light sabers as a comparison is due to the fact that you can see how they react from the seeing the Star Wars movies, yet I haven't seen any 40k movies of any sort where a character is using a Power weapon.

 

Oh I'm asking as I'm planing to do a short 3d animation between a Sister of Battle and some Tau, and I was wondering what you Fluff buff's knew about Power Weapons.

The power sword, or any power weapon works by making a matter disrupting field around the object. This field causes the molecular and atomic bonds of a material to weaken, making it act akin to a material with much lower bond strength. AKA it makes steel act like paper. What is underneath the field can be nearly anything, from a normal metal sword, to an energy beam in a cohesive field like a lightsaber (Eisenhorn's antique power sword) to a chainsword (eviserator).
The weapon requires some force to go through objects (although a lightsaber does too, as seen in TPM) but it will cut through nearly anything if the blade is good enough, the field turned up enough, and the material doesn't have ridiculous bonds like Adamantium.
Note that Imperial armouring materials and metallurgy is more advanced than Tau's, power armour actually has really good thermal properties and thus makes it very hard to kill without obscenely powerful plasma weaponry.

Great reply, thanks mate!

So if a Sister with a Power Sword took a hard swing at a Tau Fusion Blaster, there's a fairly good chance that the sword would go most of, if not all, of the way through it?

i guess it would got right through actaully.
Remember that the inside of a weapons is hollow,alien or not.So it would go through all the chambering fast.

That's what I was thinking.
If you tried the same thing on a Tau steath suit or Power Armour, I'd say you wouldn't have much luck slicing all the way through.

Cool, assuming I get around to making this animation, that info will come in handy.

Not to hijack the thread, but I'm pretty sure Eisenhorn's sword Barbarisater was a regular old sword blade, not a lightsaber.

Barbarisater was a regular sword, the sword he loses in Xenos near the beginning is a lightsaber esque beam.
As for going through a Tau Stealth suit, yes a normal power sword will cleave one right in half. A stealth suit is not actually that well armoured, the armour save in game representing the fact that the suit is exceedingly difficult to get a direct strike on more than the fact that the suit is tough as nails. Remember that stealth suits look almost exactly like the sneak suits from Predator when activated, only a minor blurring when in motion, and that you generally need advanced sensors to pin down the location.

I do wonder why power weapons don't effect vehicle armor in some way though.

In fluff they do, you see powerfists on guardsmen literally rip Leman Russ tanks apart, or Power Swords cutting through predators like a hot knife through butter. The game abstracts it to make vehicles more viable. Although not too well.

Accually Fluff wise Space marines could take on 20 x more then they can on table top just for balancing resons...

Fluff wise and tape top wise, yeah they can. Pit a marine against a squad of imp guard, watch the hilarity ensue!

Also, I would imagine a chainfist is used when a marine or anyone else for that matter is crazy enough to hit a tank with his fist. A chainfist even on a guardsman would rip a hole through a leman russ. I cannot explain the power sword one though.

One thing to remember about powerweapons is that they are still dependant on the strength of the user. They can chop through just about anything, but they need force behind them. Which is why even if armed with a power weapon, a guardsman or even a Marine can't chop through a tank.

Unless it's a REEEEEEEEEEEEEEALY sharp power weapon.... like the Sword of Secrets, or the Black Sword, or Nemisis Force Weapons.


Then it has a CHANCE of hurting tanks (not a great chance though).

Phausi, did you even read the thread? They have to be strong enough to cut through the modified bond strength of the material of the tank. This makes tanks hard to do damage to as adamantine materials are ridiculously hard, but powerswords have shown to be able to cut into tank armour on numerous occations, its just that a sword is a horrible weapon to hurt a tank with because all it does is make a less than meter deep, very thin gouge out of it, compared with other weaponry.
Marines have shown to be strong enough to rip the armour off of tanks, you think they can't put a sword through it?

Tactical Marines or Marines in Tactical Dreadnought Armor?

Terminators come with powerweapons and can easily be upgraded with Powerfists. It is funny how termie armor grants a +1 A a 2+/5+ save but no strength bonus.

Posted By the_trooper on 07/27/2006 9:52 AM
Tactical Marines or Marines in Tactical Dreadnought Armor?

Terminators come with powerweapons and can easily be upgraded with Powerfists. It is funny how termie armor grants a +1 A a 2+/5+ save but no strength bonus.

Standard terminators come with powerfists, no need to upgrade them.

 

 

What about lightning claws? Wouldn't the extra blades actually reduce some of the power behind each blade, therefore making it less effective? I guess you'd have to add the effects of just punching someone with it... You should add some lightning claw animations in there as well, as you can get very creative with them (just think of the plausibilities).
oh and dude tell us when you've got that animation up, for it sounds very much nice lol.

lightning claws are basically 4 or 5 small power swords built into one gauntlet.

with regards to having to have sufficient force behind a power fist type thing in order to damage a tank, i remember the horus heresy novels that Angron himself carries a monstrous chain-glave that he gleefully hacked through buildings, swathes of men and i believe a couple hundred tonnes of rubble!

erm, there has been a basic error of fluff. light sabers aren't a laser, the are a magnetic field with superheated charged plasma held within. as the magnetic field passes over the object to be cut (arm, leg head etc...) the object passes into the plasma.

this explains why you can parry a light saber with another lightsaber (the magnetic fields repell each other)

and why jedi are reall scared of people throwing fridge magnets

You could say low strength power weapons cannot damage high armour same way a laser scalpel will just scratch the paint on a car.

I guess chain fists and eviscerators have additional momentum behind them hense 2d6 armour pen. Because of the chains.

Power swords might 'cut through anything' but thast isnt necessarily how a power weapon always works. You can have a power mace, the DA sprue has one. Then there is the Croxius.
therefore there is a 'power bludgeon' option that works differently to a sword or axes 'power slice'.

One thing to remember is that if a marine jumps onto a vehicle and tears part of the armor off, after that he can yank wires out, or stick a grenade inside. With a power weapon all you're doing is slashing, stabbing, or smashing at a big sheet of metal.

Oh, and by the way, there are "light sabers" in the game. The inquisitor in the Inquisitor series of books has one.

I think to some extent there is a confusion of background with game mechanics. Power swords don't necessarily "ignore" armor, that is for game balance. In 2nd ed power weapons did not ignore armor, they had very large save roll modifiers. For instance, a power sword had a negative five to the save roll ( thus ignoring power armor, but not termies, because it used to be a 3+ on 2d6).

A power fist had a 8 str and a -8 save mod if I recall correctly. I like to think that the massive fist contains a larger field generator than the sword.

Also, the problem with smacking a sword through armor is that, as Darkhellion pointed out, that tanks are ridiculously hard. The disruptor field may weaken the material in question, but the armor is so thick that if you swing a sword at it, basically no matter how strong the field, your thin little puny sword will snap.

the power weapons work by a disruptor field that excites particles to the point that they begin to break bonds and heat up. this is how the power weapons pass through armor, by causing in to break apart on a molecular level. the weapon is then free to do damage internally to the target. the sword itself is any old sword with a power field. thus to cut through a tank it would take multiple swings or beats on it to do enough damage to work inside. the game has no way of keeping track of damaged locations (as armor degraded over periods of sustained fire) so this is why more power weapons don't break through them. power fists are not enhancing the bearers strength through mechanics, but as said above, by the huge power field around it that can even cause flesh to break apart like the armor.

this is all as my local GW rep explained it to me, but he may be wrong. i like to think of them in this way though as it makes sense to me.