Or, how to make them fun and acknowledge the lore.
As many will know, Power Swords are mighty relic weapons of champions, lost pieces of art and technology that can’t even be understood by the brightest minds of the 41st century, built by ultra-powerful AIs that are now banned by the religious nuts of the Adeptus Mechanicus who think you pray to a toaster to make it pop up faster.
Really, Rejects shouldn’t have access to this kind of stuff. I imagine that only the most elite of the Inquisitorial troops would have access to these things in the setting.
Right now they’re made to have bad movement to make up for their power, and the only build requiring one specific tier 4 perk, and their gameplay being turn it on, swing three times, and that’s it.
My idea is that they should have really complicated but rewarding movesets. Get rid of the charge-up button and make it another short attack chain. Think like your optimal anti-horde combo is light-heavy-special-heavy. Like a mini fighting game. The reward is that the sword charges up more as you do the combo and mid-way through it gets powered bonuses just cleaving through enemies. Likewise it could have a complex single-target chain - perhaps it has unique chains best for Maniacs and Unyielding armor types.
I’m just trying to get across that you have to fight like a skillful hero to unlock the potential of these heroic weapons. And on top of combos, if you use too many perfect combos its power goes out of our control - show a bar or overheat or something, and it doesn’t explode but our mere mortal hands can barely hold onto it - more like a venting period. Not massively long, but interrupting. The characters could even have voicelines like “It’s like it’s got a life of its own!” Which I think even makes sense in the lore - I imagine some powerful artifact like these having a lot more powerful of a machine spirit than a standard-issue Lasgun.
Something like this could make players have to use the power of the weapon judiciously and to get the most out of it have to tailor their attack chains to their enemy and their current level of power in the weapon.
In current lore powerswords are far more common then in earlier iterations. Currently Astra militarum squadleaders have access to them. And I’m not talking scions but regular infantry.
Never came across any powersword behaving like this in any novel so far…
I think a powersword rework would be a good thing as the current activation mechanic is anti-fun for me. But I’d prefer something along the lines of a battery mechanic. While I like complex combos like with the Tigris II Eviscerator, I think the need for a spedific combo to activate the powersword would actually be a worse solution then what we currently have.
Just seemed more in line with the idea of these being, simply, the best melee weapons in the setting. This is the weapon of a champion, in the hands of a reject, we can barely handle it. I thought it would be a way to take that high quality and make it both a boon and a balancing feature.
Maybe requiring the combos would be worse, it would give a higher-than-usual learning curve to it. Could be too clunky in real-game situations, perhaps better would just be after a certain number of hits.
I used to like the idea of a battery system, but I don’t know if that will really be enough to balance it, and if it doesn’t have sharp downsides it either needs to be normalized in damage to an extent, it’ll be overpowered, or else it’ll need to be made bad in other ways like the poor mobility - which feels really bad.
Are there really cheap knock-offs in the lore or are you just joking?
Also there was planty of discussions about PS rework with many great ideas, my personal fav one - “battery” charge like moonfire bow in V2. And yes if weapon has big cleave + big damage movesent shouldn’t be braindead spam.
As you said, it’s another nice possibility to make PS less boring and less polarizing : the Special attack being the only ‘Powered’ swing in the moveset, and its properties changing depending on when you incorporate it into the normal combos.
I feel like Mk VI is pretty fine. Can do some cool stuff. Heavies are maybe a little under utilised but pretty interactive and fun to use. I really don’t see a need for a rework.
In terms of improving power swords I’d try to go for mostly simple things to improve blessing diversity and accessibility of the weapon, as well as to find something, not quite sure what, to give Mk III a place.
Main change I’d do is up base powered charge swings to 2 for both power swords, and remove the second level of power cycler. Anyone who already has T4 it just gets replaced with T3 and their weapon is identical to how it was. Main purpose of this is to make power sword feel better before you have access to power cycler, and also make power cycler less obligatory. Foregoing it entirely would theoretically become a valid option with this change, the other blessings generally aren’t bad they’re just terribly outcompeted with one slot locked to power cycler.
I don’t know what you do with Mk III exactly but maybe they could improve its unpowered damage profile so you can have a playstyle around BM + Slaughterer or something that only powers up occasionally to gain momentum at the start of a fight or for bursts against elites. Probably more interesting things you could do with it but again I’m aiming for maximum impact minimal work with these suggestions.
If power sword ends up too strong they can always tune the powered attack profile down a bit to compensate. Better that than limiting the powered mode, I think most would agree on that much.
Well they call you that but that’s just some guards. We’re accepted into the Inquisition at trust rank 30, but I think we’re still just pragmatic pieces, not anyone special.
That said, the weapons are apparently more common than I initially thought. I guess it’s not that weird to have them.
That was my original thought, too, just mulling on it on my own. But it doesn’t really play into any fantasy, it’s just a balancing mechanic. I think requiring you to do something that takes effort to get the full effect would be better. A battery mechanic front-loads the advantage of the weapon; this is very powerful and necessitates the weapon being toned down to match or being dominating. At the same time, if it’s too bad when the battery runs out and you are under too much pressure to recharge it, it actually puts a hard wall against skill. Melee are fundamentally different from ranged where you can take Weapons Specialist and quick-swap to the revolver or something similar and pop it off and switch back. There are plenty of times where switching off your melee is a terrible idea, and if it’s kind of useless without space then it’s just bad.
Back-loading the power through requiring you to actually do something means you have to earn the advantage. I don’t know that it’s the best route but I think it’s a distinction worth making here.
Really, you don’t think nearly all cleaving strikes is kind of boring? It utterly wrecks a weapon for me, I can’t stand a boring moveset.
Yeah, it’s got a decent amount going on between the push attack, block shenanigans, activation tech, which in turn adds some stamina management, plus there’s the low mobility to build/play around:
Your statement does apply to Mk III though, which I agreed could use some changes. I don’t hate the moveset though, lights for single target, heavies for groups, pretty standard for a lot of weapons
I personally don’t want them in the game at all. A lot of 40k weapons don’t belong in the hands of the lowely crew we are part of. They are here…so balance will remain a problem.
Good luck with that without a resource system which you spend when using the charged attack. At least force swords have the peril limiter.
None of power / force weapons should have the levels of cleave, stagger, power etc. if they want to actually balance them. Terrible mobility isn’t the way to balance those.
