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I have the distinct feeling this has probably been addressed before, but I have been unable to find a clear answer.

This came up in a game I played the other night. My Thousand Sons were beating on some Necrons and it finally came down the my Sorcerer and his Lord. Without going into the details, the question is, does a Resurrection Orb still allow a WWB attempt against a Force Weapon's "killed outright"?
My opponent argument:
1) the Orb's entry that said "may attempt...even if...damaged by weaponry that causes instant death or close combat weapons that allow no Armour save".
a) He said that since "instant death isn't capitalized, its not exactly referring to the Strength v Toughness Instant Death rule in the BGB.
b) That the "killed outright" rule for Force Weapon doesn't allow armor saves and is a close combat weapon and thus fit the bill too.

Again, sorry if this has all been done before, but a clear answer would be most welcome.

"Killed Outright", if I'm not mistaken, is defined as removing all your wounds. The res orb never stops anyone or anything from losing all their wounds to a single hit, it just allows them to get a "we'll be back" roll afterwards (where they normaly wouldn't without the orb). So there really is no conflict there. The force weapon would reduce whatever it hit to 0 wounds and if the res orb is in range and the model has the "we'll be back" rule, they will get a roll later on.

Allow me to clarify. My question is, if a Necron Lord with a Res Orb is killed by a Force Weapon's psychic attack and is "killed outright", is he allowed to attempt a WWB?

You are only disallowed to make your WWB if you are killed by a HtH weapon that allows no armor saves, or if you suffer Instant Death. As yet, the Force Weapon does not inflict Instead Death, so that has no effect on WWB even if he Didn't have the orb. The power weapon aspect on the other hand would have prevented it if he did not have the orb.

Currently, force weapons do not cause ID, they kill outright, and therefore protections against ID do not work against them.

I appreciate the responses and while they provide a great deal of insight on the Instant Death portion of the rule, the "kills outright" portion remains elusive.

I suppose it boils down to my clarification question. Can a Necron attempt a WWB if it was killed by a Force Weapon's Psychic attack? Please do not confuse this with the Power Weapon portion of the weapon, but I'm only concerned with the "kills outright" part.

I wouldn't have thought "instant death" would need to be capitalised for it to refer to the game term of the same name.

I recall seeing plenty of examples in rulebooks and codices where the word "wound" isn't capitalised - does that mean it's something other than the term as defined in the Rulebook? The new Daemon codex fails to capitalise a number of terms ("assault/defensive grenades," "rending," etc), so it's shaky ground your opponent is basing his argument on.

DaBoss wrote:I appreciate the responses and while they provide a great deal of insight on the Instant Death portion of the rule, the "kills outright" portion remains elusive.

I suppose it boils down to my clarification question. Can a Necron attempt a WWB if it was killed by a Force Weapon's Psychic attack? Please do not confuse this with the Power Weapon portion of the weapon, but I'm only concerned with the "kills outright" part.

"A Necron cannot self-repair if it was destroyed by a close combat weapon that allows no Armor save or any weapon whose Strength is twice the Toughness of the Necron concerned (13, C:N)."

An attack that "kills outright" by a means other then the Inta-Death rule doesn't negate WWB rolls.

"Instant Death" and having a model be "killed outright" (by such things as a force weapon or a double '6' result on a Shokk Attack Gun, for example) are two different things, sadly.

This is even highlighted in the Apocalypse rules for Gargantuan creatures in which GCs are immune to "instant death" but still suffer D6 wounds (or was it D3? Don't have the book on me right now) from weapons that "kill them outright" (and a force weapon is listed as an example).


Anyway, the answer is that the Rez Orb does allow a WBB save in this situation.



To go off on a quick tangent, this was all created by GW's stupid need to create an instant death rule and then go and make half the multi-wound models in the game ignore the rule.

Then they still want some rules to be able to kill models outright (the point of instant death) so then they have unintentionally created two rules that do essentially the same thing but have made it very difficult to tell when these rules are used and when they aren't used.

IMHO, all weapons that kill models outright should just be classed as "instant death" weapons. And models that are immune to instant death should suffer D3 wounds instead of being killed outright when wounded by such a weapon.

That would make everything so much more simple and would still give instant death weapons a bit more 'punch' against models that are immune to it.

Yakface your post is a little confusing. you stated that a) instant death and "killed outright" are two different things and b) the rez orb will allow a WBB from "killed outright" weapons. a does not seem to lead to b.

There's really only 2 considerations here 1: are instant death and being killed outright separate rules? and 2: if they are separate- does the res orb rule state specifically that it allows a WBB roll against weapons that kill outright?

of course I don't own a necron codex so I can't check myself.

Wraithlordmechanic wrote:Yakface your post is a little confusing. you stated that a) instant death and "killed outright" are two different things and b) the rez orb will allow a WBB from "killed outright" weapons. a does not seem to lead to b.

There's really only 2 considerations here 1: are instant death and being killed outright separate rules? and 2: if they are separate- does the res orb rule state specifically that it allows a WBB roll against weapons that kill outright?

of course I don't own a necron codex so I can't check myself.

Sorry, you are right it is a bit confusing. The WBB rules specify that the ability can be used anytime the model is removed as a casualty except for a few exceptions (an instant death weapon and/or a CC weapon that ignore armor saves). Those exceptions are removed for a Lord who is carrying a Rez Orb.

That means a Lord with a Rez Orb will always get a WBB roll unless he is killed by something that specifically states WBB cannot be used to save him (like being rundown in a sweeping advance, for example).

The long and short of it is thus: Force weapons do not inflict instant death, thus they do not negate WBB.

The only issue I could see arising here is in the case of no rez orb, in which case it could be argued that since the force weapon is a power weapon and no saves are allowed against the multiple wounds caused by it's ability it is on this note that it would deny WBB.

Way to read the whole thread before posting, Dakkalad. The interaction between "killed outright" and the WBB rule with a Res Orb is exactly what is being discussed:

Can a Necron attempt a WWB if it was killed by a Force Weapon's Psychic attack? Please do not confuse this with the Power Weapon portion of the weapon, but I'm only concerned with the "kills outright" part.