Even terminators can sometimes die to a lucky las shot.
Thickest part of the armor.
Hundreds at the most, thats at the top end of the spectrum, where the armor is built well by master Mechanicus priests, and enhanced or upgraded by chapter artificers. If not, then I'd say around the hundred rounds mark. Although I don't think a Space Marine will allow himself to get into such situations where he can be easily hit by a hundred rounds.
Even terminators can sometimes die to a lucky las shot.
Thickest part of the armor.
Hundreds at the most, thats at the top end of the spectrum, where the armor is built well by master Mechanicus priests, and enhanced or upgraded by chapter artificers. If not, then I'd say around the hundred rounds mark. Although I don't think a Space Marine will allow himself to get into such situations where he can be easily hit by a hundred rounds.
Holy feth..that's...unexpected.
They're tanks pretty much..
Terminator armor must be crazy..
Yea, but that's just bolter rounds. Power Armor can easily take any conventional weapon the Imperium throws at it. Even then, there are specialized bolter ammunition that are designed to penetrate power armor, and they can be produced easily as well. Then there's the fact that more than half of the enemies the Astartes faces out in the galaxy don't use Imperial weapons. There are many more weapons out there that are more than powerful enough to tear through power armor. I don't know enough about Eldar armor to form a reasonable opinion on it, but I do know a Fire Warrior can go toe to toe with an Imperial Guardsman, so I would say their armor is equal to Guardsman armor, although it wouldn't be surprise me if it's actually better. Their suit systems are definitely equal to power armor systems though, again if not better. As for the Battlesuits, from books I've read and from what I've seen people say online, I can only say I think they are comparable to Space Marine power armor. But where an Astartes armor amplifies his strength, the battlesuit only provides the strength. A Battlesuit can definitely take an enormous amount of bolter fire though.
i think this is entirely dependant on who is writing the book. in some cases one bolt round can punch through the chest plating on power armour in other cases 5 shots wont penetrate the armour. i think it also depends on who the character is shooting/being shot by. i think we can all agree that Kharn being shot buy generic ultramarine 1 isnt going to do any damage but kharn shooting at generic ultramarine 1 will blow the marine into thousands of tiny pieces spraying bone fragments which are traveling at hyper volicty and punch through the armour and kill the rest of the squad...
see where im going with this? its the same with every race and every weapon. wouldnt be suprised if various main characters armour could hold out against melta guns. and im pretty sure farsight could get trod on by an imperator class titan and get up afterwards shouting "armour save is 1+ motherf*****r!!!"
Automatically Appended Next Post: and im not talking about plot armour im just saying that we are told so many extremes that its hard to guage it
I watched a Dawn of War video the other day, where the marines were cut down left, right and centre by ork weapons fire. And my marines die in droves every time I play, so I'd say not that many!
I think I read somewhere (BRB?) that when we roll to hit, it's not a single shot but a a few rounds going off - BRRRAP BRAAAP!
monders wrote: I think I read somewhere (BRB?) that when we roll to hit, it's not a single shot but a a few rounds going off - BRRRAP BRAAAP!
The shooting rules in 40k are an abstraction of reality. A single dice roll to hit does not necessarily represent a single round (or energy bolt or whatever) being fired, but represents the likelihood of the model that is firing causing damage to their target. assault cannon are supposed to have firing rates of thousands of rounds per minute, but we roll 4 dice to hit in a turn. Similarly standard infantry weapons are generally depicteds as semi or fully automatic with soldiers firing bursts at the enemy, but you only roll 1 or 2 dice in game to represent their actual effetiveness. In other cases, say lascannon or missile launchers, a single roll to hit may actually represent a single shot, but not necessarily.
monders wrote: I think I read somewhere (BRB?) that when we roll to hit, it's not a single shot but a a few rounds going off - BRRRAP BRAAAP!
The shooting rules in 40k are an abstraction of reality. A single dice roll to hit does not necessarily represent a single round (or energy bolt or whatever) being fired, but represents the likelihood of the model that is firing causing damage to their target. assault cannon are supposed to have firing rates of thousands of rounds per minute, but we roll 4 dice to hit in a turn. Similarly standard infantry weapons are generally depicteds as semi or fully automatic with soldiers firing bursts at the enemy, but you only roll 1 or 2 dice in game to represent their actual effetiveness. In other cases, say lascannon or missile launchers, a single roll to hit may actually represent a single shot, but not necessarily.
Excellent round up, cheers flinty.
I think I had my wires crossed with a discussion on Genestealer effectiveness against Terminator armour in CC... Sooo many interesting topics on these hallowed pages!
wufai wrote: Didn't the OP mentioned 'the thickest part of the armour?' Hundreds of bolt round would be a good answer
The Horus Heresy works would tend to contradict that. Single bolt rounds go clean through Astartes armor all the time in the series, or at least tear off large bits of it. About the only place this doesn't occur is in the shoulders. Otherwise guys get limbs blown off, helmets smashed in, sucking chest wounds, etc to single shots.
Even terminators can sometimes die to a lucky las shot.
Thickest part of the armor.
Think of it like this.
It takes an anti-tank missile to guarantee that you punch through Power Armor.
So anything else is basically hoping to hit a weak spot on the armor, like a joint or eye lens.
Eldar armor might be the same strength as Power Armor, but because the person wearing it is frailer its a little easier to damage the target. You might not penetrate their armor, but the impact can still pulp organs and break bones.
The same with Tau. A battlesuit has the same protection as power armor, but is a little more durable represented by the extra wounds.
I always kinda viewed passing my armor save as the attack hitting the strongest part of the armor and being absorbed. Failing the save is the attack hitting a weak spot or a joint.
Even terminators can sometimes die to a lucky las shot.
Thickest part of the armor.
Think of it like this.
It takes an anti-tank missile to guarantee that you punch through Power Armor.
So anything else is basically hoping to hit a weak spot on the armor, like a joint or eye lens.
Eldar armor might be the same strength as Power Armor, but because the person wearing it is frailer its a little easier to damage the target. You might not penetrate their armor, but the impact can still pulp organs and break bones.
The same with Tau. A battlesuit has the same protection as power armor, but is a little more durable represented by the extra wounds.
I always kinda viewed passing my armor save as the attack hitting the strongest part of the armor and being absorbed. Failing the save is the attack hitting a weak spot or a joint.
Tau armour is quite interesting because it is ceramitite that is lighter and easier to make (at least fo tau). And for the most part, unless you punch a hole straight though the suit, you are damaging the suits, not the pilot.
Flak: One unless it grazes. Even then it would probably hurt.
Carapace: Multiple though if you hit the weak spot they're dead.
Power: Depends on the source. Ultramarines: The Move depicts power armor as being about as good as flak armor. Just pick your favorite. Mine is that Power Armor is near invulnerable to small arms fire unless you hit a weak spot.
Terminator: You won't get through it unless you hit a weak spot with anything short of a plasma gun. Then they're just dead.
Psienesis wrote: Bolts are an artillery munition disguised as a small-arm.
In the world of 40k, Boltguns are pretty much bog standard for a small arm if the rules are anything to go by.
@BrotherHaraldus
I think armor is just like that. If it can penetrate the armor effectively then the armor might as well not be there. An all or nothing sort of thing, really.
Fair enough. Alright, well, Boltguns are powerful for an Imperial small arm. I am not sure how other race's weapons have been compared to it in the fluff.
Psienesis wrote: Bolts are an artillery munition disguised as a small-arm.
In the world of 40k, Boltguns are pretty much bog standard for a small arm if the rules are anything to go by.
@BrotherHaraldus
I think armor is just like that. If it can penetrate the armor effectively then the armor might as well not be there. An all or nothing sort of thing, really.
The bog-standard small-arm is a lasweapon. A boltgun fires an armor-piercing, explosive round that can deploy all kinds of crazy munitions (mutagenic acids, incendiary chemicals, etc.). Space Marines of any flavor are elite forces for a reason.
Terminator armor is close to impervious to bolter rounds in the hard spots like the torso, gorget around the head, and pauldrons, able to walk right into heavy bolters with little care. Normal PA varies by the mark, with MK's IV, VI, and VII being around the same, MK's V and I being terrible to use, and MK's II and III being better than all the others to some degree in the strength of the armor itself, at the cost of speed. Generally, anything aimed at the pauldrons simply isn't going to work, but at the torso I think it's safe to say that generally a full 20-30 rounds emptied at the torso is always going to end up with either a kill, or in rare cases, incapacitation.
Eldar Guardian armor is gak, and doesn't stand up to bolter rounds nearly as good as PA, and while the most flexible and granting the most agility due to being a second skin, yeah. Burst fire will punch through it fairly easy. Semiautomatic even.
Flak just sucks and always will suck. It's great protection against autoguns and in the modern day would be fantastic armor, but against bolters? Even if it just detonated against it and didn't penetrate, it'd kill the wearer from the force and rupture organs. Carapace armor is a lightyear jump ahead in comparison, able to take glances or even a direct hit.
To my understanding, Tau armor is similar to IG carapace.
TheCustomLime wrote: Fair enough. Alright, well, Boltguns are powerful for an Imperial small arm. I am not sure how other race's weapons have been compared to it in the fluff.
Well pulse.burst is pretty consistently portrayed as being more powerful than bolters (the FW game is not applicable here because they didn't want you to get an extremely powerful gun straight off. For gods sake lasguns were better than then in FW). Eldar shuriken is kind of weird as it's hard tell exactly how powerful, but they generally considered about the same.
Shuriken are about the same strength as bolter rounds. Except the Shuriken has way less effective range(likely due to the ammo losing ballistic stability)
Grey Templar wrote: Shuriken are about the same strength as bolter rounds. Except the Shuriken has way less effective range(likely due to the ammo losing ballistic stability)
Not even that, they simply lack the explosive punch bolters almost always follow up with. You can shoot up an Astartes, or even a normal human with shuriken rounds. Unless it cuts something important, it's just a nasty flesh wound.PA's so thick that despite Shuriken's being GW's magical idea of monomolecuar, lack enough force to drive them through bulky armor like PA or terminator armor. Some unlucky chaps tend to die, but otherwise they'll just come out looking like pincushions. Hell, even ludicrously thick Flak armor would probably protect you from shurikens.
Grey Templar wrote: The difference being that eventually the flak will get shredded to the point where you are vulnerable. And shuriken weapons fire a ton of shots.
It's still a crap gun to use as the main weapon for your infantry. IIRC, at least the Corsairs have a what are pretty much hellguns as an infantry weapon, which would be far superior than shuriken weapons, especially in the penetration department.
Grey Templar wrote: The difference being that eventually the flak will get shredded to the point where you are vulnerable. And shuriken weapons fire a ton of shots.
It's still a crap gun to use as the main weapon for your infantry. IIRC, at least the Corsairs have a what are pretty much hellguns as an infantry weapon, which would be far superior than shuriken weapons, especially in the penetration department.
Shuriken weapons are quite powerful though (although, like bolters, and a middling infantry weapon). They are super sharp, very good at penetrating armour, and they fire, IIRC, hundreds of shurikens per burst. It's not as effective against power armour, but it is quite effective against anything less (and will turn an unarmored human into salsa).
MrBlackledge wrote:i think this is entirely dependant on who is writing the book. in some cases one bolt round can punch through the chest plating on power armour in other cases 5 shots wont penetrate the armour. i think it also depends on who the character is shooting/being shot by. i think we can all agree that Kharn being shot buy generic ultramarine 1 isnt going to do any damage but kharn shooting at generic ultramarine 1 will blow the marine into thousands of tiny pieces spraying bone fragments which are traveling at hyper volicty and punch through the armour and kill the rest of the squad...
see where im going with this? its the same with every race and every weapon. wouldnt be suprised if various main characters armour could hold out against melta guns. and im pretty sure farsight could get trod on by an imperator class titan and get up afterwards shouting "armour save is 1+ motherf*****r!!!"
Automatically Appended Next Post: and im not talking about plot armour im just saying that we are told so many extremes that its hard to guage it
Kharn uses a plasma pistol, just sayin'.
Also, I'd think a bolt round were take at least a couple shots to punch through power armour, and just a single shot for standard FW armour.
Now, if the FW was wearing a battlesuit, it would be an entirely different story.....
MrBlackledge wrote:i think this is entirely dependant on who is writing the book. in some cases one bolt round can punch through the chest plating on power armour in other cases 5 shots wont penetrate the armour. i think it also depends on who the character is shooting/being shot by. i think we can all agree that Kharn being shot buy generic ultramarine 1 isnt going to do any damage but kharn shooting at generic ultramarine 1 will blow the marine into thousands of tiny pieces spraying bone fragments which are traveling at hyper volicty and punch through the armour and kill the rest of the squad...
see where im going with this? its the same with every race and every weapon. wouldnt be suprised if various main characters armour could hold out against melta guns. and im pretty sure farsight could get trod on by an imperator class titan and get up afterwards shouting "armour save is 1+ motherf*****r!!!"
Automatically Appended Next Post: and im not talking about plot armour im just saying that we are told so many extremes that its hard to guage it
Kharn uses a plasma pistol, just sayin'.
Also, I'd think a bolt round were take at least a couple shots to punch through power armour, and just a single shot for standard FW armour.
Now, if the FW was wearing a battlesuit, it would be an entirely different story.....
FW armour (or at least the plates, not the fabric) is known to stand up to bolt rounds. Bolters aren't really that good in the scene of things. They can kill a normal human-like being easily enough, but if he is wearing at least decent armour (carapace armour, combat armour, aspect armour) he can survive. For tau combat armour, you have a good chance at surviving as long as it hits the armour plates but if you look at tau armour, the fatigues underneath are nowhere near as strong.
Grey Templar wrote: Shuriken are about the same strength as bolter rounds. Except the Shuriken has way less effective range(likely due to the ammo losing ballistic stability)
Not even that, they simply lack the explosive punch bolters almost always follow up with. You can shoot up an Astartes, or even a normal human with shuriken rounds. Unless it cuts something important, it's just a nasty flesh wound.PA's so thick that despite Shuriken's being GW's magical idea of monomolecuar, lack enough force to drive them through bulky armor like PA or terminator armor. Some unlucky chaps tend to die, but otherwise they'll just come out looking like pincushions. Hell, even ludicrously thin Flak armor would probably protect you from shurikens.
Ever heard of:
Bleeding to death
Incapacitation
Infection
Pain?? A human shot up by shuriken rounds isn't going to keep walking. As it has always been said 'remove the models as casualties'. A casualty does not necessarily mean dead, just injured to the point where they may as well not be on the board. Any model that has bled to death, been knocked out by the blast from artillery fire or any other such occurrence (lost a limb from a boltgun) is a casualty and is removed from the board.
Fixed that for you.
Also, no it doesn't, Shuriken Weapons are AP5 IIRC.
Grey Templar wrote: Shuriken are about the same strength as bolter rounds. Except the Shuriken has way less effective range(likely due to the ammo losing ballistic stability)
Not even that, they simply lack the explosive punch bolters almost always follow up with. You can shoot up an Astartes, or even a normal human with shuriken rounds. Unless it cuts something important, it's just a nasty flesh wound.PA's so thick that despite Shuriken's being GW's magical idea of monomolecuar, lack enough force to drive them through bulky armor like PA or terminator armor. Some unlucky chaps tend to die, but otherwise they'll just come out looking like pincushions. Hell, even ludicrously thin Flak armor would probably protect you from shurikens.
Ever heard of:
Bleeding to death
Incapacitation
Infection
Pain?? A human shot up by shuriken rounds isn't going to keep walking. As it has always been said 'remove the models as casualties'. A casualty does not necessarily mean dead, just injured to the point where they may as well not be on the board. Any model that has bled to death, been knocked out by the blast from artillery fire or any other such occurrence (lost a limb from a boltgun) is a casualty and is removed from the board.
Fixed that for you.
Also, no it doesn't, Shuriken Weapons are AP5 IIRC.
Yup, AP5. Shuriken weapons are generally viewed as being able to shred flak armour.
Grey Templar wrote: Shuriken are about the same strength as bolter rounds. Except the Shuriken has way less effective range(likely due to the ammo losing ballistic stability)
Not even that, they simply lack the explosive punch bolters almost always follow up with. You can shoot up an Astartes, or even a normal human with shuriken rounds. Unless it cuts something important, it's just a nasty flesh wound.PA's so thick that despite Shuriken's being GW's magical idea of monomolecuar, lack enough force to drive them through bulky armor like PA or terminator armor. Some unlucky chaps tend to die, but otherwise they'll just come out looking like pincushions. Hell, even ludicrously thin Flak armor would probably protect you from shurikens.
Ever heard of:
Bleeding to death
Incapacitation
Infection
Pain?? A human shot up by shuriken rounds isn't going to keep walking. As it has always been said 'remove the models as casualties'. A casualty does not necessarily mean dead, just injured to the point where they may as well not be on the board. Any model that has bled to death, been knocked out by the blast from artillery fire or any other such occurrence (lost a limb from a boltgun) is a casualty and is removed from the board.
Fixed that for you.
Also, no it doesn't, Shuriken Weapons are AP5 IIRC.
This is fluff. We don't care about the tabletop as the tabletop is completely different than the fluff (even the RPG's). You had ridiculously thick flack armor, it will stop a shuriken by eating up its force, thus eventually stopping the blow.
As for bleeding out, did you happen to miss the hitting anything vital part? A shuriken that hits nothing but muscle and misses arteries will be as lethal as a scapel launched out of an air cannon. Their lethality comes through volume of fire, otherwise they're a terrible arm to use as the base weapon for your civilization's army, especially when fusion guns or beefed up laser guns are available.
Imperial_Arson wrote: How many bolt rounds does it take to go through Space Marine, Eldar, and Tau armor? And generally any other armors.
Honestly, I'm not entirely sure of what you mean. 'Getting through armor' is not usually a function of how many hits the armor has taken (at least when ti comes to small arms vs armor), you don't have to wait until armor is too damaged to offer protection before you can effect the wearer. If you hit someone in armor 5 times and they are injured only on the final shot, that does not mean it took 5 shots to go through the armor, merely that one of those shots got through and it happened to be the 5th one. Which is to say, that weather or not a given shot penetrates a suit of armor (sufficient to cause injury) is independent of how many previous shots connected. The only time this is not true, is when the armor has become so riddled with holes that it no longer offers protection to the wearer.
Answer: Entirely up to the author.
Real answer: If you're a Chaos Marine, your power armour can take precisely 0.1 bolt rounds before the highly explosive material the armour is made of detonates. The same applies to the plating of Chaos Dreadnoughts.
Even more real answer: The idea of failing armour saves because of shots hitting eye lenses or joints doesn't work unless Artificer Armour has less eye lens than regular Power Armour. It can't even be that the eyes are tougher, because then what is the "lucky shot" hitting? The weak point in the lens?
The realest answer: Eldar trickery.
EDIT: Standard Tau and Eldar Guardian armour can't stand up to a bolter. Suits worn by Aspect Warriors, Exarchs and Autarchs are considerably tougher. AP can be used as a rough gauge (e.g. a Guardian gets no armour save against a bolter, therefore we can assume that in fluff, bolter rounds reliably penetrate it), but once you get into 3+ vs AP5, there is literally no way of knowing.
EDIT2: Wow, Fire Warriors have 4+ armour. I thought they had 5+! In that case, yeah, they can stop bolter rounds, obviously in a lesser capacity than power/exarch/etc armour, but a Fire Warrior could be reasonably expected to get shot with a bolter and survive, unlike a Guardsman.
But it doesn't! Even if we assume that they make them tougher, does this mean that their joints and eye lenses have the equivalent of a 3+ save?
Also, if you can make a Marine completely invincible to anything less than AP3 simply by covering up the eyes and joints, surely they would have done this by now. Any Marine casualties from high-AP weapons would simply not happen, which would enormously increase their effectiveness! What about a Wraithlord? Where's the weakpoint on that (partly due to the silliness of using MC rules instead of Walker rules, I suppose)?
EDIT: Also, how do you fail an armour save against a flamer? Does the fire just particularly go into your eyes or something?
Burning liquid tends to get into even the smallest cracks.
In WW2, the worst thing a tanker could encounter was a flamethrower. It could weasel into the tiniest cracks and fill the tank with fire.
On power armor, the fuel would burn right on the surface of the armor. Eventually melting the joints, which are made of flexible material(presumably something akin to rubber) and would present a weak spot. The close proximity of the flames could also get into the power systems of the backpack. It could also melt the power cables or eye lenses. Or maybe the armor was previously compromised by an enemy attack that left an area the fuel could get into.
Naturally its not an instant kill, hence why you still get a save against it.
I feel like I'm pretty much reiterating at this point but yeah I think it depends. At point blank, I think bolt rounds pretty much punch through everything. At a distance though its a little different. There's also the fact that there's a secondary explosion after the round actually hits so, assuming the round doesn't deflect off the plates, the actual detonation of the the bolt will really damage if not destroy the armor plating. It's entirely up to discretion though because space marines have been shown many times in novels to be capable of running through heavy bolter fire with just a few dents and cracks. I've always wondered about this question myself because if the armor actually followed consistent tougness, nothing would ever get done in SM vs Chaos SM battles. Both sides would simply be shooting at each other with neither side causing any real harm.
Well there is also the question of if the hit was solid or just glancing.
Power armor has lots of curves, so unless the bolt actually hits it dead on its going to just deflect.
Bolt shells actually only explode if they penetrate a target, not just on impact. Many times they are described as just deforming against the surface of armor before deflecting without exploding. The explosion is "mass-reactive", meaning it requires surrounding mass to trigger it. Its not a simple impact explosive.
Agreed. Bolt rounds are deadly. I'd argue that one shot is enough to go through armor easy. It's the endurance that keeps a marine alive for shot two or three. Unless you're Fulgrim a shot to the head is always lights out.
Agreed. Bolt rounds are deadly. I'd argue that one shot is enough to go through armor easy. It's the endurance that keeps a marine alive for shot two or three. Unless you're Fulgrim a shot to the head is always lights out.
Yea, but the bolt round explodes when it penetrates, which can mean a big crater where it hit, with shrapnel traveling throughout your body, shredding flesh, bones, and organs, rupturing them, causing tremendous internal bleeding, and in most cases, instant death. But throughout the fluff, in book's, the games, and on the tabletop, that's not consistent, there's a fair chance the target can survive and continue fighting. So I assume from that, that the armor offers more than just a reassurance for protection.
What I'm saying is, given the description of a bolter round, even a person with the physiology of a primarch, I have serious doubt they can get hit in the head, chest, stomach, or pelvic region and survive. And if they get hit in a limb, there's almost 100% chance that the limb will be gone forever.
You had ridiculously thick flack armor, it will stop a shuriken by eating up its force, thus eventually stopping the blow.
Shuriken rounds are mono-molecular shards of a crystalline substance. Flak armor is like kevlar... great for stopping the relatively blunt impact of a bullet, absolutely terrible at stopping an edged weapon (like a knife) without a metal, ceramic or other hard-material insert or plate.
Flak armor is about as effective against shurikens as a t-shirt. The discs/darts/shards simply cut right through it, since they do not mushroom or flatten like a standard bullet would.
Agreed. Bolt rounds are deadly. I'd argue that one shot is enough to go through armor easy. It's the endurance that keeps a marine alive for shot two or three. Unless you're Fulgrim a shot to the head is always lights out.
Yea, but the bolt round explodes when it penetrates, which can mean a big crater where it hit, with shrapnel traveling throughout your body, shredding flesh, bones, and organs, rupturing them, causing tremendous internal bleeding, and in most cases, instant death. But throughout the fluff, in book's, the games, and on the tabletop, that's not consistent, there's a fair chance the target can survive and continue fighting. So I assume from that, that the armor offers more than just a reassurance for protection.
What I'm saying is, given the description of a bolter round, even a person with the physiology of a primarch, I have serious doubt they can get hit in the head, chest, stomach, or pelvic region and survive. And if they get hit in a limb, there's almost 100% chance that the limb will be gone forever.
Primarchs aren't human, they're demigods/deities incarnate in the flesh. Fire a boltgun at one and the shell will ping off their skin (maybe inflicting a flesh wound), shoot a lascannon point blank directly at their chest and they'll simply shrug it off. It's fairly obvious the warp had a hand in their creation.
It may be the first hit or it may be the twelfth hit, but it is only one round that has to get through. Armour doesn't magically suck up shots until it reaches a set number and then it fails, each shot tries to penetrate the armour on its own and succeeds or fails on its own.
Now the odds of penetration vary. A Bolter round has about 1/3 of getting through SM armour, 1/2 of getting thoughTau armour and is not stopped by Guardsman armour whatsoever on the table top. In the fluff these numbers are skewed somewhat with Bolter rounds being stopped by nothing short of Power Armour, but always being stopped by Power Armour except when dramatically appropriate.
Grey Templar wrote: Burning liquid tends to get into even the smallest cracks.
In WW2, the worst thing a tanker could encounter was a flamethrower. It could weasel into the tiniest cracks and fill the tank with fire.
On power armor, the fuel would burn right on the surface of the armor. Eventually melting the joints, which are made of flexible material(presumably something akin to rubber) and would present a weak spot. The close proximity of the flames could also get into the power systems of the backpack. It could also melt the power cables or eye lenses. Or maybe the armor was previously compromised by an enemy attack that left an area the fuel could get into.
Naturally its not an instant kill, hence why you still get a save against it.
Also fire is, like, really hot?
If it burns on the surface for long enough just the heat will penetrate the armour and cook the wearer. As noted above it doesn't have to actually kill the wearer to make them combat ineffective. Blinded or major muscle damage would do just as well, or even just burning out the power circuits of the armour or jamming a limb in place.
Now the odds of penetration vary. A Bolter round has about 1/3 of getting through SM armour, 1/2 of getting thoughTau armour and is not stopped by Guardsman armour whatsoever on the table top. In the fluff these numbers are skewed somewhat with Bolter rounds being stopped by nothing short of Power Armour, but always being stopped by Power Armour except when dramatically appropriate.
Nope... The probability that a model firing a bolter in one turn causes telling damage on the target is reduced by 2/3s by the presence of power armour and 1/2 by the presence of carapace. Flak armour is deemed to flimsy to provide any effective protection, although failing the roll to wound could easily be explained by the armour helping to stop a round or shrapnel fragments rather than the round bouncing off the wearer's skin. The roll of a single dice to hit does not represent the firing of a single round. Abstraction abounds in 40k.
A few. Most of the time I see them taking more then one shot to bring down an enemy and I think that is primary because of story reasons. One stroke battles are kind of dull. You want there to be some trade in fire.
One thing to keep in mind is that they are described as powerful being like mini grenades, but everything else in 40k is just as powerful. I can even see flack armor catching one or two rounds. Though not as many as tau armor would Particularly if it hits that big plate thing. Elder armor I kind of don't see it blocking any rounds though. Mostly because I picture eldar as the type to just doge the bullets and you tend not to be able to doge bullets and absorb them. It's a rule.
I don't see flak armor stopping a bolt round. Those things are designed to be armor piercing... it's like putting up your standard "bullet-proof" jacket against an AK firing an API round... that jacket ain't stopping jack gak.
Flinty, I was responding to the odds of going through the armour. My assertions make no account of who's wearing it. Not that the ability of the round to go through armour and the ability to wound an in armoured target are related (indeed, armour penetrating ammunition in reality is generally not as good at creating serious wounds as non AP ammo).
In a human target, no. But plenty of AP shells are designed to explode inside targets like vehicles, bunkers or ships.
Still, being able to penetrate armour and being able to wound a target are seperate measures of a weapons performance and not necissarily related (though they can be).
Those are kind of a different realm of discussion, though, since those are ordnance and not man-portable "small arms". Standard AP ammo relies on kinetic force and wound-shock to incapacitate, while bolter rounds rely on blowing your chest into chunky salsa.
Jefffar wrote: Flinty, I was responding to the odds of going through the armour. My assertions make no account of who's wearing it. Not that the ability of the round to go through armour and the ability to wound an in armoured target are related (indeed, armour penetrating ammunition in reality is generally not as good at creating serious wounds as non AP ammo).
You said that one round has a 1/3 chance of getting through power armour, based on the 40k shooting rules. This is unverifiable against the background because one roll of the dice does not equal one bolt round fired.
Jefffar wrote: Flinty, I was responding to the odds of going through the armour. My assertions make no account of who's wearing it. Not that the ability of the round to go through armour and the ability to wound an in armoured target are related (indeed, armour penetrating ammunition in reality is generally not as good at creating serious wounds as non AP ammo).
You said that one round has a 1/3 chance of getting through power armour, based on the 40k shooting rules. This is unverifiable against the background because one roll of the dice does not equal one bolt round fired.
The actual number of shots fired, no. But I think the number of hits is probably countable.
Eldar Aspect Armour is described as Power Armour in the fluff. For all intents and purposes, they're the same except the Eldar one has more movement controls but less subsystems (like strength enhancement); the durability is about equal.
Dire Avenger armour was meant to be as good as standard Marine power armour originally (being the 'tactical' Aspect Warriors), while specialists like Fire Dragons had better and Swooping Hawks had worse.
Grey Templar wrote: Shuriken are about the same strength as bolter rounds. Except the Shuriken has way less effective range(likely due to the ammo losing ballistic stability)
Not even that, they simply lack the explosive punch bolters almost always follow up with. You can shoot up an Astartes, or even a normal human with shuriken rounds. Unless it cuts something important, it's just a nasty flesh wound.PA's so thick that despite Shuriken's being GW's magical idea of monomolecuar, lack enough force to drive them through bulky armor like PA or terminator armor. Some unlucky chaps tend to die, but otherwise they'll just come out looking like pincushions. Hell, even ludicrously thick Flak armor would probably protect you from shurikens.
Shuriken weapon is very deadly, and penetrate armour almost like an Assault Cannon.
The fluff states single shuriken can penetrate several inches of Plasteel armour.
If we consider fluff: against bolt rounds, PA is fairly weak, TDA is indomitable and impervious to all but the luckiest of shots. PA is strong against most other small arms fire: flamers (for the most part), lasguns, stubbers etc. This is reinforced by the fact very few SM can take cities and the like - the armour is crazy good, shots just bounce off.
In the game the dice rolling in my opinion represents the capability of a volley if you like to cause damage/wounds. Realistically there would be several shots going off at once, however, to make the game balanced, bolters are played down in comparison to fluff bolters. Otherwise PA would be 2+ 5++ 5+ FNP and TDA would likely be 2+ 2++ 2+ FNP etc. But these stats would be according to probably the most badass version of SM that the author could imagine. so dont bite my head off
From what i read in my novels using a bolt round on Tau/Eldar armor is a complete waste of a bolt as it goes straight through the armor like it was paper. But as for SpaceMarine armor it all depends where it hits and the range the bolt was fired from because bolts need time to properly arm themselves. An example in the WordBearers novels, A word bearers dark apostle pins a WhiteConsuls SpaceMarine to the ground and presses his bolter against the side of the WhiteConsuls helmet and needs to fire 3 bolts to penetrate it. But a bolt round fired from a distance where the bolt is properly armed would probably go straight through the helmet unless the marine was lucky.
because bolts need time to properly arm themselves
No, they don't. They're lethal right out of the muzzle. It's a two-stage gyrojet. Conventional powder sends it down the barrel at supersonic speeds, like any bullet, and then some distance later (possibly even immediately) the gyrojet kicks in. It's lethal at any point in its range.
Once it hits something, the mass-reactive fuse is triggered, and the round explodes a micro-second later, making sure that its good and in you before your torso becomes chunky salsa.
a WhiteConsuls SpaceMarine to the ground and presses his bolter against the side of the WhiteConsuls helmet and needs to fire 3 bolts to penetrate it
And in Blood of Asaheim, a Space Wolf has a boltgun put to his helmet and a single round explodes his skull. Fluff is inconsistent.
For accurate-ish portrayals of weapon damage, I tend to look at the various 40krpg's from FFG. In Black Crusade (game I'm currently in) A space marine has on average 20 wounds, his armour soaks 8 points of damage, and his natural space marine toughness soaks about another 8,
So thats 20 wounds, soaking the first 16 points of damage on average. An astartes bolter does a d10+9, witha penetration of 4. Also, due to the horrendous nature of bolter ammuntion, they tend to cause more serious wounds due to explosion/shrapnel/general-bolter-angriness, so they roll an extra d10, picking the highest. This leads to an average roll of about a 7 being used for damage, so thats 15 points of damage, ignoring the first 4 points of armor, so your average space marine will take 3 damage PER bolter round. Most of the time you fire on semi-auto, so you'll probably hit twice on average. Assuming the astartes doesn't ninja-dodge (super annoying mechanic sometimes), he'll die from about 4 bursts from a bolter (half a magazine round abouts)
So yeah, a bolter will pretty much kill a space marine fairly easily. Bolters straight up bypass eldar armor, generally turning them to paste if they take a hit or two directly.
Tau are in one of the side books I dont have, but necrons are *slightly* less durable than an astartes, due to space marines having superior armor.
Then you get to terminator armor. Terminator armor soaks 14 damage. Terminators have precisely 0 cares about taking a bolter to the face. It just annoys them. Don't do it.
StarHunter25 wrote: For accurate-ish portrayals of weapon damage, I tend to look at the various 40krpg's from FFG. In Black Crusade (game I'm currently in) A space marine has on average 20 wounds, his armour soaks 8 points of damage, and his natural space marine toughness soaks about another 8,
So thats 20 wounds, soaking the first 16 points of damage on average. An astartes bolter does a d10+9, witha penetration of 4. Also, due to the horrendous nature of bolter ammuntion, they tend to cause more serious wounds due to explosion/shrapnel/general-bolter-angriness, so they roll an extra d10, picking the highest. This leads to an average roll of about a 7 being used for damage, so thats 15 points of damage, ignoring the first 4 points of armor, so your average space marine will take 3 damage PER bolter round. Most of the time you fire on semi-auto, so you'll probably hit twice on average. Assuming the astartes doesn't ninja-dodge (super annoying mechanic sometimes), he'll die from about 4 bursts from a bolter (half a magazine round abouts)
So yeah, a bolter will pretty much kill a space marine fairly easily. Bolters straight up bypass eldar armor, generally turning them to paste if they take a hit or two directly.
Tau are in one of the side books I dont have, but necrons are *slightly* less durable than an astartes, due to space marines having superior armor.
Then you get to terminator armor. Terminator armor soaks 14 damage. Terminators have precisely 0 cares about taking a bolter to the face. It just annoys them. Don't do it.
I don't think the RPG books are too accurate though, and underpower Eldar.
Aspect Armour should block bolters almost as well as to better than marine power armour.
Sometimes armor is so useless you'll wonder why anyone bothers, other times it's so tough that you'll wonder why everything isn't made out of the stuff.
Assuming bolters are being fired with BS4 against a T4 model and a statistically perfect world:
2+ saves: 18 bolter shots to get 1 unsaved wound
3+ saves: 9 bolter shots to get 1 unsaved wound
4+ saves: 6 bolter shots to get 1 unsaved wound
5+ saves: 4.5 bolter shots to get 1 unsaved wound
6+ saves: 3.6 bolter shots to get 1 unsaved wound
changerofways wrote: Assuming bolters are being fired with BS4 against a T4 model and a statistically perfect world:
2+ saves: 18 bolter shots to get 1 unsaved wound
3+ saves: 9 bolter shots to get 1 unsaved wound
4+ saves: 6 bolter shots to get 1 unsaved wound
5+ saves: 4.5 bolter shots to get 1 unsaved wound
6+ saves: 3.6 bolter shots to get 1 unsaved wound
Incorrect, bolters are AP5 and ignore both the 6+ and the 5+ saves.
changerofways wrote: Assuming bolters are being fired with BS4 against a T4 model and a statistically perfect world:
2+ saves: 18 bolter shots to get 1 unsaved wound
3+ saves: 9 bolter shots to get 1 unsaved wound
4+ saves: 6 bolter shots to get 1 unsaved wound
5+ saves: 4.5 bolter shots to get 1 unsaved wound
6+ saves: 3.6 bolter shots to get 1 unsaved wound
Incorrect, bolters are AP5 and ignore both the 6+ and the 5+ saves.
changerofways wrote: Assuming bolters are being fired with BS4 against a T4 model and a statistically perfect world:
2+ saves: 18 bolter shots to get 1 unsaved wound
3+ saves: 9 bolter shots to get 1 unsaved wound
4+ saves: 6 bolter shots to get 1 unsaved wound
5+ saves: 4.5 bolter shots to get 1 unsaved wound
6+ saves: 3.6 bolter shots to get 1 unsaved wound
Incorrect, bolters are AP5 and ignore both the 6+ and the 5+ saves.
I think he is including to hit and to wound too.
Regardless, its incorrect because its based on the assumption that the roll of a single to-hit dice for a model with a bolter is equivalent to the firing of a single round. The shooting rules are an abstraction so its impossible to equate dice rolled to shots fired.
The Space Marines in FFG's Deathwatch game are purposefully intended to be "Movie Marines", and be capable of tearing tanks apart with their bolters (which the way the dice pool goes, happens more often than not.).
And if a bolter is doing d10+9 Damage, even without the Tearing quality (which is where that "roll an extra d10, choose the highest" rule comes from), average damage of a bolter round is 14.5 damage. With Power Armor rated at 8 Armor Points, that means that even a minimum-damage bolter round (d10 roll of 1, +9) is punching through the armor and hitting the guy inside it.
The Wounds stat in the FFGRPGs is not analogous to the W stat of the wargame. It's more closely matched to "hit points" from D&D, or the "Wounds" score from Warhammer Fantasy RPG.
Asmodai Asmodean wrote: the real question is, how the hell does a genestealer hit harder than a supersonic bullet round?
Well, the genestealer is bigger than the bullet round. So, assuming it is hitting with its claws at supersonic speed, it only makes sense that the genestealer hits harder.
Asmodai Asmodean wrote: in the dreadful smurf movie they bring down a mountain with bolter fire.
the real question is, how the hell does a genestealer hit harder than a supersonic bullet round?
Because a single bullet has one chance to get through heavy armour at the point of contact. A genestealer can scrabble and scrape and clamp and pinch awaý at weak points as much as it likes when it hits combat. Referencing at least 2 of my previous posts, the rules for CC and shooting are ŕepresentative of the ability of a unit to cause damage, they do not represent a single blow or round fired.
