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 I have been folloing GW for 4 or 5 years, on and off. I love the idea of powerfists/claws/ etc., but it occurs to me that I have never seen an actual depiction of a powerfist actually doing anything (other than being held aloft in the . "Look at my huge hand" pose).

 I think I have seen a shot or two of Power Klaws sinpping somebody in two, that's it.

 How do Powerclaws look when they work? Is it some guy just punching holes in tanks? Or do they rip handfulls of tank armor like tissue out of a box? is there noise or light?

The way I've always imagined a powerfist working is that the disruptive energy surroundung it nullifies the advantages of any kind of powered armor (which is pretty much all armor in 40k to one degree or another) and then the sheer mass of the thing crushes whoever is  wearing said armor, unless the attacker rolled a 1, of course.

As for vehicles, I think the powerfist user just bashes away until there's a hole in the thing, then starts rooting around for important systems or squishy crewmembers.

I always pictured them as crushing things. They're slow, so that's how I envision it. The user grabs his enemy, and the Fist crushes down on him. While it's doing that, the victim can whack away with his Chainsword (or whatever), but eventually, he pops.

With tanks, I envision it as being used to crumple armor and tear it loose of the vehicle.

The thing is, the Fist is basically just a glove, maybe it goes up the arm some way. That won't really make you punch any harder, since punching comes from the shoulder, chest, legs, etc. On the other hand, when it comes to crushing stuff, the Fist can be a lot like the jaws of life. The wielder just needs to "apply it" to the target, and then it crushes down.

Power weapon disruption fields are described as "eating through armour, bone, and flesh with ease", so I've always seen them as "disintegration" weapons of a sort that just vaporize material as it comes into contact with the field (hence why Invuln saves still work against them, as they tend to be non-material things like energy shields).

So I see Powerfists as just punching big holes through things, leaving charred/melted edges where the disruption fields have annhilated the material. In the case of vehicles, you'd have key components destroyed as the fist punches right through armor plating to shred wheels, tear up weapons, breach containment on power sources, etc.

(As far as amplifying strength, all the IG powerfist representations I've seen go up the whole arm, and Marine fists are fitted to their armor, so it's hard to tell precisely where the mechanical modifications for it end. Same with the Orks I've seen with Power Klaws.)

As it so happens... I have in my possesion a copy of the oooooooooooooold GW computer game "Space Hulk" (an adaptation of their boardgame), and the picture on the front is of a deathwing terminator using his powerfist to punch through a bulkhead, stormbolter blazing, into a room with genestealers swarming around.

I imagine the impact against unprotected flesh would cause big gorey explosions

Ah, Fist of the Northstar. I hated that particular piece of manga. All the guy ever did was walk around and touch guys, and they would explode... no big fight scenes, no dramatic story... just 1 guy walking and making guys blow up.



Booooooring.

A haymaker with a hell of a windup.

A bit of a random aside... are power klaws exactly the same as power fists? Before someone leaps on me and points to the rules (yeah, I've read the part where it says 'powerfists and powerklaws'), I'm talking fluffwise. Power weapons are always depicted as having that kah-razai energy field crackling along them, and power fists in some of the art have the same thing.
Powerklaws, however, don't. All they have is very sharp blades and hydrolics. Am I right in thinking that? Or completely off base?  Granted, the ork burna also counts as a power weapon, and it doesn't have any special disruption field.  It just melts through any armour it comes across (although I've yet to figure out fluffwise why there should be a strength difference for it... why is my feral warboss able to smack people around with it much firmer then my mekboyz?).
As a side note, most of the orks you see in artwork with a powerklaw that covers the entire arm are usually in mega-armour. The nob model simply has his fist and upper arm encased in it.

Posted By Citybeatnik on 12/04/2005 5:21 PM
A bit of a random aside... are power klaws exactly the same as power fists? Before someone leaps on me and points to the rules (yeah, I've read the part where it says 'powerfists and powerklaws'), I'm talking fluffwise. Power weapons are always depicted as having that kah-razai energy field crackling along them, and power fists in some of the art have the same thing.
Powerklaws, however, don't. All they have is very sharp blades and hydrolics. Am I right in thinking that? Or completely off base?


Considering the kit-bashed nature of Ork technology, I'd say the answer is probably yes and no.

Some Klaws probably do have disruption fields, others might have monomolecular razor edges on them, and some are probably just really souped up hydraulics tear through armor on brute force alone.

You never quite have the same piece of machinery twice with Orks.

Id imagine powerfists just punching a hole in a tank, like a marine clinging on the side of a tank punching a hole in it like in Halo how you hang on the side and punch the driver.
And it says they release fatal energies. So probably radiation or something when they hit you.
So a Powerfist can punch someone and the combined strength and energies will just about cripple the dude.

It probably increases the strenght, but like someone said it comes from the shoulders... etc. But what about the "rod of pain"? Where the slightest touch will send someone into sheer pain.

Klaws are just... klaws. They tear metal apart like a cat would with flimsy clothes. I mean an ork can rip a human inhalf with his bare hands.
Now triple that with a Nob and add a klaw.

In the 3rd edition rule book there was a picture of a termie surrounded by nids with a bugs head in his power fist that he had basiclly vaporized into a cloud of blood. I guess thats how i always envisioned it, a crushing weapon with a disruption field.So as it crushes it also tears molucules apart. HEY FUN!!

I have seen older IG artwork with a catachan with a powerfist basically peeling the armor off of a tank. Guess it goes either way.

I have seen older IG artwork with a catachan with a powerfist basically peeling the armor off of a tank. Guess it goes either way.

Catachan's are hardcore enough to do that on their own anyway, though. With their teeth even.
I seem to recall someone on here mentioning an except from a book where a space marine grabs someone's face with his powerfist and threatens to activate it. That help any?

The 1st edition Space Hulk boardgame rulebook had a picture of a terminator crushing a genestealer's torso. I think the text description of the fist also used the phrase "crushing power" or something like that.

Powerfists are surrounded in energy fields that have the same effect as power weapons just they crush stuff. Imagine hitting someone in the face and then the majority of their torso turns into Manwich, that's what it's like.

I seem to recall a bit of fluff that described the Emperor punching Leman Russ with his Powerfist, which has inspired my own image of them. I imagine powerfists as being powerweapons with a much greater amount of mass behind them (superdense materials), so much mass that it requires suspensors or similar compensators to allow the wielder to to strike with it at any reasonable speed. However, such compensators are slow working, thus the reduction in initiative. Against vehicles, the operator would punch the armor, breach it and then use the mass of the fist and the compensators to rip open the breach.

Power Klaws probably work more off their mass - and the Ork's indomitable faith in the whining, crackling construct grafted to his arm.

I had imagined that the Power fists large casing could be used as a rudimentary shield and once the Marine gets an opening he hurls that super charged wrecking ball into his foe. I imagined the energy field would not vaporise but start to tear up, disrupt structural integrity and burn through the hard parts etc. Then the impact of the fist (Using its weight, the marines strength and the powered armours movement and strength enhancing systems) would be like dropping a bowling ball on an over-ripe melon.

But hey I'm a pretty sick guy

PS: Smoke3 I love that picture!

El'Jonson be Praised

Commander Usiel

I think there's a picture in the SM codex of a Marine Squishing a nid's head. I've pretty much always though of them as crushing weapons, though I do like the image of a king hit to the face with one.

Bruce campbell in army of darkness crushing the goblet in his homemade replacemnet gauntlet groovy!

Posted By The Professor on 12/06/2005 5:38 PM
I seem to recall a bit of fluff that described the Emperor punching Leman Russ with his Powerfist, which has inspired my own image of them.

Ahh, that special kind of love that only two genetically modified supermen can share.

Posted By tarrin on 01/10/2006 9:44 AM
Bruce campbell in army of darkness crushing the goblet in his homemade replacemnet gauntlet groovy!

bestest movie evar!!1!eleven!11!

But really,how then would the power claws work?Do they actually slice through you or does the shield around them cut you open before the blades do?

Posted By Clayman on 01/10/2006 1:29 PM

 

But really,how then would the power claws work?Do they actually slice through you or does the shield around them cut you open before the blades do?

 

However the ork using it thinks it works.

Fists - I always imagined them punching in a style ala Matrix. One hit and the dude goes flying back until he hits something. This explains the S10 hit. I elaborate on the fact that it works off a capacitor. Close the hand into a fist and the charge is built up, then when it gets into close enough range the capacitor discharges creating that nice whump that punches through doors and tanks with relative ease. Open the hand and the glove turns off and allows the user to manipulate objects without destroying them. I use this version since it is used by regular humans with the same effect so the weapon has to do the work and not the user.

Claws - I imagined them like a pneumatic claw capable of grabbing, crushing, or slicing through an object by brute force ala jaws of life. Now some versions can include disruptor fields similar to power swords that allow them to cut easily (as I imagine Yarrick's does though when it was on the ork it took his arm by brute force). The fields improve efficiency and reduce the weight of the hydraulics.

I guess I always thought of them as a combination of the crushing and punching type things.  If I had a huge robotic arm with a disruption field around it, I'd wail on aliens all day... 

Power weapons (swords, etc) in all the lore I've read, were always able to cut through things (power armor) like butter.  I always figured this was the field reinforcing the blade's normal cutting qualities. 

Applying that to a gauntlet, it'd be like having a 5 thousand pound wrecking ball on the end of your arm if you punched somebody.  They wouldn't explode, but they would be crushed into jello.  Same with if you squeezed somebody's head.  Whichever's more effective in a given situation.

I was leafing through old WDs today, and found a picture of an Ultramarine Dreadnought photoshopped on page 114 of US WD 298.  It's got a lightning field crackling off it, even grounding at one spot.

 

It's not a pure pfist, but it is a DCCW.

 

Cheers,

Reodd

but if you look at the chaos power fist it has sharp fingers and exhast ports on the side of it( is it a diesel or does it run off gas??) and on the chaos codex the pic has a power fist there with blue lightening coming from it so it must produce a field of some type??And i believe the imperial and crimson fist companys should have power fist for five points instaed of the reqular price( being a old time crimson fist player)...
I believe its a tearing crushing and good ole pimp slaping jester on how the power fist works and the power klaw well thats up too the Ork gods Gork and Mork on how they work???

The concept of power weapons, according to 2nd Ed. Weaponry description:
Power Sword (from memory)
The energy field breaks open the armour, allowing the blade to slice through unshielded flesh.

So, a powerfist would tear away the armor, and in its unstoppable forward advance meets the body of the victim.
The still active energy field now does to his ribcage what it did to the armor before: make it give way.

Yea, im pretty sure that powerfists are just like oversized, heavier duty, more intense power weapons. They have an electrical disruptor field thingy that pulls apart molecules while the denser materials inside the actual fist itself provide momentum and swinging power. The only reason why i think that it takes so long to smack someone in the face is cuz of the bulkiness and extra weight incorporated into a powerfist.