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Can a Inferno cannon from the hell hound hurt the Avatar?

Why not?

MasterSlowPoke wrote:Why not?

The avatar is immune to flamers and melta weapons.
I'd say that the intent is clear that he would be, but it's not in the list of things that can't hurt him, so unless you trust GW faq, RAW, he's vulnerable to it.

Ah, no. Page 24 Eldar Codex. Avatar has Molten - body cannot be wounded by Meltas, Flamers and Heavy Flamers.

The Inferno Cannon is clearly a Flamer (a lethal gout of white-hot flame) with a range.

Use the Bane Woulf instead!

Permissive ruleset.

If its not listed explicitly, it will work as normal:

Flamestorm cannons, Inferno Cannons, Whirlwind Incendiary missiles, flamers of Tzeentch all of these fire weapons work just fine.

Jack

Hmm - contrary to the FAQ tho
http://www.games-workshop.com/MEDIA_CustomProductCatalog/m1610177_Eldar_FAQ_2008-05_Edition.pdf

Bottom of page one specifically states that avatars are immune to incinerators, inferno cannons and inferno pistols. On the basis they are flamer or melta weapons 'by any other name'.

However, this is FAQ, not official ruleset. I leave it to more experienced rules arguers to discuss the difference. Basically the way I play it is 'flames are flames' (this hurts me, as I dont play Eldar) Avatars are immune.

Good luck!

I'm inclined to agree with Darkkt, the FAQ pretty clearly states three more examples of weapons that cannot hurt the Avatar.

So now you've got 3 camps (in decreasing order of permissiveness):

1) The Eldar rules, the FAQ, and the RAI of the FAQ all count - any weapon that has the special ability Melta, is any of the weapons listed on the FAQ, or that can be described as a 'flame weapon' by merit of it's fluff text or description cannot hurt the Avatar.

2) The Eldar rules and the FAQ both count - any weapon that has the special ability Melta, Flamers, Heavy Flamers, Inferno Cannons, Incinerators or Inferno Pistols are non-effective. This does not extend to any other weapon that isn't specifically mentioned in the Eldar Rules or the FAQ.

3) The Eldar rules are the only rules that officially count - any weapon that has the special ability Melta, Flamers and Heavy Flamers cannot hurt the Avatar. Anything else is fair game.

Personally, I'm in group 3. FAQs are nice, but they aren't official rules, like you said. In addition, FAQs always irritate me because instead of taking the intent behind the question (ie. can you spend 10 minutes and actually give us a specific and inclusive list of all weapons that are ineffective against the Avatar as per his special rule?) they just added verified 3 random extra weapons as being ineffective and added a confusing statement about 'flame weapons' without defining what constitutes a 'flame weapon.' Is Daemonic flame special? Is it anything that uses a template? What about Bane Wolves then?

It's not like they don't have access to the weapons lists, you know? Emperor forbid they actually read one of their Codices...

DoW

The FAQ is right. Anything which involves 'flame' 'heat' or terms like that in its description or name should be classed as having no effect on the Avatar.

Where's Gwar? He should be in here stirring up a RAW flamewar.

Jackmojo wrote:Permissive ruleset.

If its not listed explicitly, it will work as normal:

Flamestorm cannons, Inferno Cannons, Whirlwind Incendiary missiles, flamers of Tzeentch all of these fire weapons work just fine.

Jack

This is right, although clearly this is a hole that needs to be patched up. (One hole out of many that is...)

The FAQ is right. Anything which involves 'flame' 'heat' or terms like that in its description or name should be classed as having no effect on the Avatar.

What the FAQ should or shouldn't do is most assuredly a RAI question. RAW, the FAQ isn't valid and the Codex states three specific things that have no effect.

By your logic:

Any las weaponry works on the principle of heat damage. So by your logic lasguns, laspistols, hot-shot lasguns, hellguns, hellpistols, lascannons, and multi-lasers are out.

Plasma weapons and their associated effects are also heat-dependant so plasma guns, plasma pistols, plasma cannons, executioner plasma cannons, Tau plasma rifles, pulse rifles, pulse carbines, burst cannons and kroot rifles are all gone.

Lightning based effects rely on much of their damage from heat energy (charred corpses anyone?). So lightning claws, thunder hammers, lightning arc and other lightning based psychic abilities are no good.

Most non-kinetic psychic abilities are all a form of warp fire or energy that sears a target with heat in some way shape or form. Holocaust, Soulstorm, Tzeentch flames, etc. cannot be used.

And when you really get down to it, the 'power' in power weapon is really just an energy field; since we don't quite know how that works we'd better play it safe and not let power weapons, power fists, force weapons or anything like that hurt him either.

I think we need a less nebulous way of looking at the rule.

DoW

The las weapons do NOT work on heat damage, they seem to havea concussive force (hence las "rounds") in the back ground, often punching straight through but causing massive secondary damage.

Electrical weapons mainly kill not through heat but through the shock frying nervous systems - the heat damage can also kill but is certainly not the main method of damage.

Inferno cannons are still flame cannons, so don't work.

The las weapons do NOT work on heat damage, they seem to havea concussive force (hence las "rounds") in the back ground, often punching straight through but causing massive secondary damage.

Electrical weapons mainly kill not through heat but through the shock frying nervous systems - the heat damage can also kill but is certainly not the main method of damage.

Okay I was being obviously being facetious but since you questioned my knowledge of the inner workings of the 40k fluff-verse, it is TIME TO PAY!

Las is obviously short for 'laser' (light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation, in case you didn't know) and the 3rd edition codex even mentions this when it describes lasguns on pg.16. Laser technology relies on the damaging effect of converting light energy to heat energy at the point of contact with a target. Lasguns, or any other kind of las weaponry, work on exactly the same principle as an industrial cutting laser, except they appear to be many times the wattage and have developed a way to greatly reduce atmospheric thermal blooming (which is the loss of energy in a laser due to the loss of heat to the air around it). It also seems that battery technology has come a long way since the ammunition 'clip' for a lasgun doesn't appear to be much larger than a laptop battery. They do not fire 'rounds' in the strictest sense even if the average trooper in a Dan Abnett book refers to them as such. A 'lasround' is capable of punching through a target because it thermally 'bores' through that target before it's energy is dissipated, not because it provides any kind of kinetic or concussive effect. On a side note (and just for a bit of trivia) the exit wound for a las-weapon should be the exact same size (if not smaller) as it's entrance wound - this is the opposite of any kinetic based weaponry - and it also shouldn't ever bleed, since laser-based weaponry would logically cauterize any tissue they come in contact with.

The question was not "what is the main source of the killing effect" in regards to electrical weaponry being effective against the Avatar, the question was "does it use 'heat' or 'flame' in it's description." Since you used 'frying' in your own description I think it's pretty clear this would qualify. If you're not convinced, the reason we can see lightning or electrical effects is because they 'arc.' Arcing is the ionization of the surrounding air into a plasma state due to a massive and rapid heating. It's not exactly the same kind of plasma as a plasma gun (which is supposedly the nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium) but it's most definitely hot, and will most definitely kill you even if the electrical shock doesn't.

Regardless, my point was not that the Avatar should be invincible to 99% of the weapons out there because they use some kind of heat in their damaging effect, it was that the solution in the FAQ is not only unofficial ruleset, but also a really crappy answer that STILL leaves a lot of ambiguity. If you disagreed with me in an actual game, we'd most likely roll off and move on.

DoW

I would love it if he was immune to all heat based attacks. But in order for that to ever happen all Weapons would need to include a type.
Fire (-1BS, reroll to hit)
Poison (wounds on a 4+)
Cutting (Armour save counts as being one less then normal)
Explosive (Cover save counts as being one less then normal)
Light (can check range before firing)
Psychic (Invulnerable save counts as being one less then normal)

Light does provide concussive force, randonly it also has a repulsive and attractive force in there (new research, yay!)

If it doesnt have concussive force or indeed any shock damage, how does it cause shock damage to surrounding tissue? Many MANY BL books have secondary damage. Additionally you don't know if the "round" is a simple pulse or if it is jacketed in a constraining field of some type - certainly there is no noted expansion of the beam as you would expect due to the focussing effects of the lens. The beam will spread regardless of heat loss.

Finally some high frequency lasers (altho most 40k ones are "red" that may just be to make them visible without denoting the acutal main frequency, ala a tracer round) break apart bonds without using excitation through heat transfer - admittedly this owuld have to be some seriously impressive weaponry, but it is definitely possible

Anyways, gone off a little bit....

@nosferatu1001 - I'm actually very curious about this new research you found. Any links? I subscribe to a few tech magazines but they don't always catch everything new and cool.

In regards to the 40k lasguns and their concussive force, well I think the fact that something just punched a hole through you that ruins your day rather than any kinetic energy transfer that occurred. The old myth about bullets being able to 'throw' you backwards when you get shot has been debunked many a time because if the person was knocked back from getting hit by the bullet, the gun would've had to have an equal recoiling force on the firer. This would result in some pretty amusing firefights, I'll admit. (Although interestingly enough, lasguns do tend to have recoil of some kind in the fluff and video games, whereas other laser based weapons in other sci-fi do not)

What solid state ammunition does provide, however, is what's called hydrostatic shock. It's still fairly theoretical and not fully understood but the principle is essentially that a fleshy target is mostly liquid (remember how in biology they tell us we're 75% water or somesuch?) and since liquid is uncompressable, the effect of the bullet entering you at high speed is enough to blow a hole in you much larger than you would expect. Ever seen that video of the guy shooting watermelons with a Desert Eagle? It's like that.

But since a laser weapon 'round' doesn't have any mass (even if it was magnetically focused like a plasma bolt) there's no kinetic force, nor any displacement of fluid to cause hydrostatic shock. Then again, it's possible that the 'superheating' of the tissue in such a rapid manner could cause a similar effect but there isn't really anything in our world to compare it to on the same scope and level. It's definitely possible though, in the same way that lasguns themselves are 'possible', of course

Anyway that's about the limit of my knowledge without going on a Wikipedia/Google spree. I'd love to read about those high freq lasers too, so if you've got a chance to post the link I'd appreciate it!

DoW

First, sorry for my english...

...is this Phisics or W40k? (it´s a joke, nevermind )

No logic in this game

I think that to avoid conflicts, it´s important to take the RAW, because maybe someone can say:

" So if the avatar is not affected by the Inferno Cannon/flamestorm cannon/ etc...

...then if I include He´stan my LR Redeemer´s flamestorm cannons repeat to hurt " or something like that. There is a lot of examples.

But, as always, the best thing to do is to agree with your opponent the details at the beginning, or follow organisation´s rules (if tournament) and avoid bad vibrations.

Saludos a todos!!!!