Since we’re probably never getting general weapons we loot shared between characters, why not improve class identity through more class specific blessings and weapon special action differentiation?
For example, Fire grenade zealot could coat his melee weapon with fire on special action.
Psyker make a force projection for a melee attack on a ranged weapon or conjure a ranged attack from a melee weapon special activation? Heck, Veteran could speedload a revolver.
Mind you, I don’t want to say “make this a high priority”, rather, “can we brainstorm ideas how to make classes or even branches of classes more distinct from one another?”
You’re also free to say it’s a stupid idea. It’s fine. Without telling me why, it doesn’t matter, with it’ll be also helpful. And prejerk this, there always going to be issue with balance.
You don’t need to read past this as it’s gonna be my fantasizing ramblings about this suggestion:
Psyker:
Depending on Blitz ability could enhance his melee weapons with Force Slash, electrical stun capability or bunch of force knives that are release on atack animation trajectory.
Ranged weapons Force bayonet, electrical enhancement of projectile for small AoE shor duration shock and force caltrops from assail modification slowing enemies down for couple of seconds.
Zealot:
While I said it’d be cool if zealot could coat his weapon in fire, I don’t know whether I can fit it into idea of tying modifications to Abilities rather than blitzes as more faith based psychic effects. But here’s an idea: charge lets you coat your weapon with Emperor’s flames for 5 seconds and as long as you crit with melee or do ranged weakspot hits/kills you refresh duration. If you hit body or don’t crit, it runs out and put on 10s cooldown at end of duration.
Chorus would let you charge melee weapons with small AOE knockdown effect on melee hit and wave line knockdown effect on ranged weapon hit. Cloak would special rather than coating weapon would on special or blitz apply a weakspot damage debuff (target takes more weakspot damage) on a single target for 5-10s (not on fire and stun grenades it would debuff target closest affected target to zealot)
Note, while fire seems coolest, damage wouldn’t be its primary role, rather than while on fire enemies couldn’t use ranged attacks due to cookoff and lazgun pack overheating. While taking like 5-10 damage per second.
For Veteran I think it’d be interesting keystones to affect weapon specials. However maybe auras could be better like:
Survivalist letting you make improvised explosives while reloading magazines auto guns( trip mines), lazguns (lazpack grenades) and do speedloads for revolver and shotguns. While melee could have poison coating action which reduces speed and stagger resitance.
Fireteam would apply 5% damage buff on target for everyone;
Close kill let you regain stamina on special attacks or better yet Pocket sand (short range ~5m stagger effect in 30 degree angle).
Or maybe split ranged special action across Auras; close kill get’s mines, fireteam gets mag grenades, survivalist gets reload modifications. IF they choose to spend talent point for that.
At first I didn’t think I’d do Ogryn, but by the end of the typing I do have some ideas that actually revolve around Keystones for them:
Heavy Hitter would let specials (or normal attacks charged by specials) apply brittleness on bleeding enemies,
FNP would stop you losing stacks for 10s from taking damage,
BLO let you “magically” reload weapon on special (or special charged) attack kills be melee or ranged.
Let’s hope this was not too many characters and I thank you for comming to my TED talk.
I’ve previously had an idea about improving Gun Psyker utility by replacing the typical special attacks with Peril-generating “spells” on their ranged weapons. I’m thinking of stuff like the Force Swords’ force push or the Purgatus Staff’s light attack!
@Wahid and I discussed the idea in our Discord DMs.
Yeah I really like that laspistol on Psyker gets a unique force push on weapon special rather than the lame gun bash everyone else has.
More like that would be very very appreciated. Melee weapons are tricky since their special attacks often serve an important role in the weapon’s kit and you wouldn’t want them swapped out. For guns though distinct special actions across classes would be great fun and only a positive.
One idea friends and I have also had is more unique blitz modifications for Psyker, similar to how the shield ability has different use cases with wall vs dome.
One thing they could let you do with assail is maybe spec it to be more of a defensive ability, consume all your charges in one click and the shards could float around you killing things that got too close.
This way you could use it either as a melee attack power boost/cover while you force sword into a big enemy or allow a gun psyker to have temporary melee suppression while you shoot priority targets.
And then alternatively to that spec, there could be assail specs that either increase or decrease the armor pen of shards you can throw while either reducing or increasing the number of available shards respectively.
They could do a lot of things to increase skill expression even more with these talent trees, I’m hoping we see more like that in the future if they ever want to take another pass at them.
This. For many weapons they’re absolutely vital. And it’s not just that, the balance of those weapons is intrinsically tied to their specials too. If we could replace crummy weapon specials like those ranged bashes with a number of other far stronger options, it could easily mess with the overall balance. Especially considering all the other class synergies. And then there are weapons like the plasma where the special is an intrinsic necessary part of even using the weapon at all.
Not saying OP’s idea couldn’t work, but it would come with a horde of issues that would need to be addressed first. Personally I’d rather they just change the weapon specials themselves while adding more class exceptions like the psyker’s laspistol instead.
For example: The Force Staff & most ranged bashes just be thrown right out and replaced with something useful and more thematically fitting. Laspistol special on a zelly could instead do some John Wick style martial arts move ending with a critical headshot (mechanically identical to the Devil’s Claw parry), while on a vet it would be a kick to the groin with extreme stagger but low armor pen. Stuff like that!
A zealot would definitely use a weapon differently from a veteran something actually to further differentiate weapons in the hands of the different classes would be a cool touch.
I’d like if Ogryn had some sort of Momentum builder that would increase his ability to stagger while dodging.
I would also like Ogryn to be able to pick up more than just rocks to throw, like pipes, or heads of enemies, giving us a refill mechanic other than just waiting for us to poop another stone.
I don’t really think current weapon special should be changed.
But I could see them do archetype specific variants/marks. As well as making more exclusive weapons.
Eg:
Zealot getting Chain variants that enable them to have flaming attacks on their Revs
‘Occasionally Eviscerators are fitted with a small single-use flamethrower called an Exterminator to aid in combat and add yet more to their mortifying reputation, as there is little one can do to avoid such a thing’
That being a ‘separate’ variant. Though tbh seeing as the new itemisation changes is supposed to let you change marks, could see it work through it.
