I had someone tell me about a series of rules interactions that is being talked about in the competitive community on how Modifying Characteristics interacts with certain stratagems.
The example he brought forward is that the Stratagem
Auramite and Adamantium for the Adeptus Custodes out of War of the Spider will not have an effect on weapons that are being affected by Combat Doctrines.
Example:
A Tactical Marine's Bolt Gun, while in the Tactical Doctrine, will not have it's increased AP negated by this stratagem.I wanted to see what everyone's opinion is on this series of rules and how they would interact.
The first point is for the rule regarding modifying characteristics:
If a rule instructs you to replace one characteristic with a specified value, change the relevant chraacteristic to the new value before applying any modifiers...
Then we have to look at Combat Doctrines:
The Armour Penetration characteristic of ... weapons this model is equipped with is improved by one ...
So with that, it is clear that Combat doctrines are modifiers to Armour Penetration. You are being directly told to
improve the characteristic. So then we look at the Custodes.
... an Armour Penetration characteristic of -1 or -2 is resolved as 0...
Now, to me that does not read as having modified the characteristic of the weapon. The characteristic is still the -1 or -2, but when the attack is being resolved it is treated as 0. I feel that if they were to have this stratagem modify the characteristic, it would be phrased more along the lines of:
weapons targeting this unit with an Armour Penetration characteristic of -1 or -2 instead have an AP Characteristic of 0.Does this logic pan out, or am I making a stretch in a vain attempt to have my Allarus being worth the effort against Marines?