Whoa that's hardcore. Like Termintator Armour/Poor Quality Power Field/Best Quality Synthmuscles hardcore. Figured it should be as such but still pretty damn powerful.

Rule Question:
With the Power Fist is Unnatural Strength doubled as well, or just natural? Example standard Chaos Marine with Strengh 40 has a Strength bonus of 10 including armour and Unnatural Strength. How much does he do with a Power Fist (or other weapons that double strength bonus)?

Answer:"You double for the Power Fist, then add the Unnatural bonus. That's kind of a golden rule in all the games :)

Hope this helps and thanks for playing!

Tim Huckelbery"

With the comment about the other games I'll have to assume you don't include the bonus from armour in the doubling either.  Good to know for those who bought BC first.

Nathiel said:

Is the bonus from armor not doubled in the other games or something? Otherwise, I see no reason to not double it. It isn't an unnatural characteristic.

Correct. In the other systems Unnatural Characteristics were a multiplier on the natural characteristic then any bonuses were added after. The Power Fist doubled your natural SB or added one to the multiplier of your Unnatural you already had, then you add the bonus from your Power Armour. 

The + instead of x of unnaturals in BC makes many things more straight forward, but made the power fist need more clarification. That's why I asked the question.

Nathiel said:

Hmm, it's kinda a whole different situation then. I'm going to keep playing that you do double the strength from armor for now. Just because you don't in another version that handles things differently isn't a reason to doubt the current one. And fluff-wise, i don't see that it makes sense to double only the strength of the meat of your arm, but not the strength added by the armor supporting that meat and muscle.

 CSM have a starting strength bonus in the range of 3 to 5, with Unnatural 4 on top of that. Armour adds an extra 2, or 3 in the case of terminator armour. This gives a starting CSM a strength bonus range of 9 to 12. A starting human in comparison only has a strength bonus range of 3 to 5, iirc.

Now if you treat the powerfist as a multiplier on top of all other bonuses, that gives a CSM a strength bonus range of 18 to 24 which to my mind sounds stupid. Dreadnoughts, super heavy tanks and titans have strength bonuses in this region if you check other books in the 40k line so i doubt this is as intended.

Most RP systems will have you operate on the maths rule of BODMAS (brackets of division multiplication addition subtraction). In this instance you multiply the base number by 2 then add the Unnatural 4 and the 2 or 3 from armour, for a total of  12 to 17 (3 to 5, x2 = 6 to 10, + 6 to 7  = 12 to 17). This range is much more reasonable yet retains some of the power you'd expect from 8 foot tall super human warriors wearing power armour and strength enhancing battle gauntlets.

I am however willing to bet that the powerfist as stands is simply a cut and paste job from Deathwatch or another supplement and fully expect to see it being errata'd to be an Unnatural Strength addition, as the system now treats it. As marines used to get Unnatural x2 and now get +4, it'd make sense for a power fist to also give +4 for a total of +8, in which case it'd look to be a strength bonus range of 13 to 16 (3 to 5 +4 unnatural +4 power fist +2 to 3 armour = 13 to 16). As you can see this change would actually make CSM with powerfists stronger on average yet gets rid of any unsightly rules-lawyering or anything a munchkin could pounce upon.

Hopefully we'll also see something on synthetic muscle grafts and their compatibility with marines too. 

Best to just get rid of the weird SB adjustments on the power fist and instead just up its damage by 4. Makes things so much easier all around.

 Honestly it's not that hard to just remove the unnatural stat adjustment, double what's left, then add the unnatural stat back in. If you just up its damage by 4 it removes quite a bit of what's good about the powerfist.

HappyDaze said:

Larkin said:

Or that! Sometimes i go into maths-mode and stop thinking sensibly. I think i helped prove the point about correct application of modifiers though.

Larkin said:

I'm not convinced that an extra 2 to 6 damage (depending on base strength bonus) is all that much more impressive than just upping the damage by a flat 4.  What's so "good about" the current version of the power fist that this removes?

If your CSM started with 50+ ST and you bought it up to 70+ you'd get an additional +7(at least) instead of the flat +4.  That would be the difference. and if you assume the base version includes the bonus from Armour (which I don't) that pushes it up to +9 or +10 in TDA. and Chain Fists do this as well. (And Thunder Hammers from Deathwatch)

HappyDaze said:

What's so good about Best Quality melee weapons? They add 1 to their Damage as well. That's hardly anything at all, maybe we should just remove it. Maybe we should just remove the differences in weapon types as well, eg axes vs swords, and have them all do the same base. Oh and then we should just cut out all the complexity involved between Primary and Mono.

In case you couldn't tell, that's the absurdity arguement. It's important because it's there, it's all incremental.

The Powerfist (and Chainfist and Thunderhammer) stand out BECAUSE of this doubling mechanic. Otherwise they're just another power weapon. It adds diversity and the promise that as you get better, your weapon gets better at a slightly exponential rate. This leads you towards a certain type of character, high base strength, high WS. You'll also tend to get a hold of anything that'll help your paradigm, and that leads to other roads. It helps define a character. It creates character.

I did follow up with the rest of the question:

What about the bonus from Power Armour? Strength 40, +20 from PA, (unnatural +4) with Power fist. Is the SB 14 or 16 in this example?

"Sorry, missed that bit. He double his base bonus (4 to 8), then add +2 (for the +20 on the Power Armour) then +4 (for Unnatural Strength) to give 14 in all.

Tim Huckelbery"

So it is as it has been in the other games.
 

I would like to know if prerequisites for talents apply during character creation.

 When experience is spent, yes. If something is awarded during the creation packages, then no.