Is there a rule? Leading Question.

[Nabterayl]

Ahh, I understand the crux of the question now. Thanks, s_harrington!

Nabterayl has tried to lead a persuasive counter argument, but each thing he's shown discusses the fact that when a person uses a weapon in combat, there are benefits applied to it. It's never actually said that effects cannot be applied outside of close combat. I've seen assumptions made from this, but as we all know, assumptions can be wrong. Hell, up till now I made the same assumption. And I've been playing since 1995.

True enough. Let's recall, though, that we'll need a very good reason to read the rules as permitting us to do something they don't actually tell us we can. I don't say it's impossible (keep reading), but "the rules don't tell me I can't" isn't a good warrant.

If we say that the ruling applies to the 4th edition Chaos Codex, then we acknowledge that Abaddon's stat line is incorrectly printed and we have an illegal character.

We absolutely say that Abaddon's stat line is incorrectly printed, if we read S4(8) to mean that Abaddon is S8 for purposes of, say, taking Strength tests. As Abaddon's rules say, "Abaddon counts as equipped with a Daemon Weapon that doubles his Strength (to Strength 8, as shown in his profile) instead of the normal +1," and again, on page 93: "the wielder attacks with +1 Strength in close combat." Looking at the rules, rather than the shorthand profile, I think it's quite clear that Abaddon is only Strength 8 when he wields the weapon known as the "daemon sword Drach'nyen and Talon of Horus" (technically a single weapon two-handed weapon).

Now we run into the daemon blade in this edition's Codex: Grey Knights, which is what triggered this line of thought for me.

The Daemonweapon is clearly placed in the weapon's section of the Wargear portion of the codex. So we can establish it is a weapon, without a doubt. 5 of the 9 powers of this blade have a direct bearing here.

2. Vampyre: This heals the user wounds in return for causing them. It can take the user above his normal number up to 10. Do these extra wounds only exist in close combat and then vanish after close combat is over? Well perhaps we can make an exception just this once... although the wording clearly says "its wielder immediately gains +1 wound (to a maximum of 10)." and wounds are a characteristic. Let’s move on.

3. Deathlust: Here the bearer gains the USRs Furious Charge and Rage. FC is easy enough, it only occurs during the assault phase. Rage on the other hand has an effect every single phase! During the movement, you must move. During the shooting phase it controls your model if you decide to run. During the assault phase it controls your consolidate moves. Very clearly this happens outside of assault. Let's move on and see what else is evident.

4. Dark Ressurection: The bearer of the Daemonblade gains the USRs of Feel No Pain and Eternal Warrior. If we follow the traditional model, the bearer would only be able to use these in close combat. Seems lame then, but we'll let this one go as it is feasible that it might only work in Close Combat.

5. Familiar: The bearer counts as one Mastery Level higher than normal. Wow. Pretty cool. I can see how the indirect benefits of this only help the model in close combat, (powering his force weapon) but, well there it is.[/INDENT]

Getting back to my earlier statement, I think one of the canons of construction for 40K rules (that is, rules by which we interpret the rules) is that no rule can ever be construed so as to have no effect at the time it was written. In other words, edition changes, for instance, can invalidate rules, but no matter what, if we read a rule so that it did nothing at the time the book went to print, we're reading it wrong. This is one of the rare cases, in my opinion, where it is okay to do something that the rules never tell you you can do.

Take Deathlust, for example. Page 42 of the main rulebook is perfectly clear that you choose what weapon to wield when your Initiative comes up. Now, technically, page 42 never tells you that you can't choose what weapon to wield before then, but if somebody said, "Well, I want to choose to wield this weapon now, because the rulebook never tells me I can't," we would be quite right in rejecting their argument.

However, if somebody said, "Well, I want to - indeed, must - choose to wield this Daemonblade during the Movement phase because otherwise, the bearer of my Daemonblade will never be subject to the Rage special rule," what would our objection be?

"But neither the main rules nor the codex ever say you can do that," we would object.

"True," says the GK player, "but they also never say you can't."

"But that is no excuse for doing something," we point out.

"Quite so," the GK player agrees. "But this is: if I can't do this, this rule in my codex would do nothing on the day it was printed."

That is a winning argument. We let (indeed, we force) the Daemonblade-bearing Inquisitor to gain the benefit and hindrance of the Rage special rule because to do otherwise would violate one of our canons of construction.

For me, that establishes the rule that effects of weapons do work outside of close combat.

This, however, I don't agree with. Page 42 of the main rulebook still controls for general purposes, so a character only counts as "using" a power fist at Initiative 1. The GK codex requires special exceptions, but I don't see how the circumstances that warrant that exception warrant us reading a new general rule into the game.

EDIT: Let me clarify that. I agree that, under the right circumstances (such as those above), special weapons can affect a bearer's attributes even outside of close combat. I would disagree, however, that a power fist's increased Strength functions other than at Initiative 1 or other than for an engaged model.

[s_harrington]

Thank you. I like your reply very much.

I was giving some thought to this, and I'm beginning to believe I got ahead of myself. It may just be that Codex: Grey Knights was written for 6th edition with a cursory editting to make sure it was still compatible with 5th edition, and some of the strangeness in it's rules will make perfect sense, where the powerfist was obviously written for 5th edition.

With that in mind, It's possible that I could be using a flawed example for proof of intent towards the powerfist. The Daemonblade is very possibly a sign of things to come, and not a sign of how things should have been. I can live with that.

One other argument strikes me very intensely. Having worked with manual and non fiction writers before, I am fully aware that such books are not the product of a single author.

We both mentioned the poor wording for the lightning claw, and how it is obvious they left off the "only in close combat" wording on it unintentionally. Then the very next paragraph we have a weapon that also doesn't state "only in combat.
Every other weapon in the rule book, and every weapon throughout all of 5th edition (except Daemonweapon) and through 99% of 4th edition state "only in close combat".

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the guy who wrote the lightning claw entry also wrote powerfist. And he's obviously not the guy who wrote all the other weapons in existence.

I'm going to go forth with the belief that leaving the text out was an oversight on that writers part, since that page has other errors as well. Too much Ganja in the office that day or something.

Thanks again for all the insightful thoughts. Hope it was as interesting to you as it was to me.

Sean

[Wildeybeast]

Harrington, I think you are mistaken in the way you are using the Demonblade. I agree with you that it can give you charateristic bonuses when you are not using it to hit something. However, these are, in effect, psychic powers rather than weapon powers. It does, after all, have a demon stuck inside it. The ability comes from the demons psychic abilities, rather than the weapon itself. As such, I do not think that the Demonblade establishes a precedent.

Furthermore, I think that using codexes to establish general rules precedents is a dangerous route to go down. Yes codexes can permit things which are not allowed under the main rules, but these apply only to forces using this codex, it is very hard to extrapolate this out to apply to all rules.