Rakarth Buffing anything? And: "strength lower than 9" vs poison?

Two questions about Rakarth's rules:

1. I will not be able to pull this off since my gaming group already said it's too cheesy. But Urien Rakarth's aura reads +1 toughness for... "friendly Prophets of Flesh units". Okay so I actually know who PoF are and so do my opponents since I like DE lore. But this rule doesn't explain, and we don't have a codex atm that explains, what that is, whether that's a coven, kabal or cult or all three. So what if I'm new in 8e, a little naive, have poor imagination and say my Kabal, Cult and Coven are all called Prophets of Flesh? Does he then buff everything? It doesn't say he would then only buff the coven anywhere.

2. There are several abilities tied to the str of the attack including Rakarth's reroll to save. But poison attacks have str *. How do these two interact in 8e?

1. GW came out and said something along the lines of "please don't, we know, and we know you know, so please don't." So I forget where exactly but they have addressed it in a FAQ or something.

2. Hmm good point, this would've been addressed in an old codex where our poison weapons were strength 1 but now that's not the case...

Add it to the list I guess

Barrywise wrote:

1. GW came out and said something along the lines of "please don't, we know, and we know you know, so please don't." So I forget where exactly but they have addressed it in a FAQ or something.

Designers Commentary:

Q: If I can choose a keyword for a unit, such as<Regiment> for Astra Militarum, could I choose
that keyword to be, for example ‘Blood Angels’ or ‘Death Guard’?
A: No.
In the example above, ‘Blood Angels’ is a Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes and ‘Death Guard’ is a Legion of the Heretic Astartes – neither of which are Regiments of the Astra Militarum.

Q: If I create an Astra Militarum Regiment of my own and name them, for example, the ‘Emperor’s Finest’, and I then also create an Adeptus Astartes Chapter of my own choosing, and also call them the ‘Emperor’s Finest’, do the abilities that work on the <Regiment> and/or <Chapter> keywords now work on both the Astra Militarum and Adeptus Astartes units?
A: No.
The intent of naming Regiments, Chapters, etc. of your own creation is to personalise your collections and not to enable players to circumvent the restrictions on what abilities affect
what units. It is also not intended to circumvent the restrictions on which units are able to be included in the same Detachment.

Thanks, that's Q1 resolved. It would have been preferable to write the rule as "his coven, the Prophets of Flesh" so you don't need to read the fluff to play the game, esp. since the 8e rulebook and index Drukhari sections don't mention the Prophets by name, but I guess it's reasonable GW expects us to find out something about the dudes we play. I wouldn't trade this for a world where my opponent can call his guardsmen the Ultramarines.

Any sources on #2?

Well Urien says strength 9 or higher. Is the strength of poisoned weapons 9 or higher? Doesn't appear to be.

PFI wrote:

Well Urien says strength 9 or higher. Is the strength of poisoned weapons 9 or higher? Doesn't appear to be.

Let's not be narrow-minded and imagine that there might be a special rule, let's say, granting "+1 save against S4 and inferior attacks".
The observation made in this thread is that "S*" makes no sense and will probably eventually be a problem.

There is. It's called Storm Armor and it's available on some imperial vehicles, literally what you described. I don't know if you knew it or just made a good guess.

Also Urien's rule reads "You can re-roll failed save rolls for Urien Rakarth against attacks that have a Strength of less than 9".

So if you evaluate this like a ms excel program as
( 1 < 9 ) = TRUE  
( 10 < 9 ) = FALSE
( * < 9 )  = ERROR
then what happens is no, Urien can't reroll his save against poison weapons, and no, those imperial vehicles that paid for extra armor vs weak weapons don't get it vs poison weapons.

edit: clarity. Also I guess you could argue it depends on what you decide to do when the result is ERROR (ranging from pass check to abort program) but like Mppqlmd says below the natural language seems to imply these checks should fail when dealing with something that is not a number since the less than operation is then not applicable.

I couldn't remember the unit having that rule, but was definitly sure to have fought against something similar. Thanks for confirming.
And you're correct. The most "procedural" interpretation of that situation leads to : poison weapons' strength isn't inferior to 9 (or 4), since it doesn't exist !

Lord Johan wrote:

Also Urien's rule reads "You can re-roll failed save rolls for Urien Rakarth against attacks that have a Strength of less than 9".

So if you evaluate this like a ms excel program as
( 1 < 9 ) = TRUE
( 10 < 9 ) = FALSE
( * < 9 )  = ERROR
then what happens is no, Urien can't reroll his save against poison weapons, and no, those imperial vehicles that paid for extra armor vs weak weapons don't get it vs poison weapons.

edit: clarity. Also I guess you could argue it depends on what you decide to do when the result is ERROR (ranging from pass check to abort program) but like Mppqlmd says below the natural language seems to imply these checks should fail when dealing with something that is not a number since the less than operation is then not applicable.

Now I see it also like this (unfortunately)...
...thx for the clear explination

NOT  There are NO poison weapons anymore, Poison does not exist in 40k, just some weapon emulate the poison rules


Its clear that you get re-roll saves vs attacks less 9 or less str, PseudoPoison does NOT modify the str, attacks includes modifiers yes, but again, PseudoPoison doesnt mod the str, just how the attack uses the to-wound chart.

Just b.c a weapon "always wounds on a fix number" aka 2+, 4+ etc.. doesnt mean you ignore a rule that says "check the Str of the attack"

Now a weapon of * is a problem, you are corret, you do NOT get a re-roll b.c there is no Str value and sense there is no Value you can not use the rule, b.c the rule says a value.

Edit: Grammar, spelling etc..