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Posted By Honkey Bro on 02/22/2006 1:56 PM

Isn't it obvious, the plasma gun caused the wound. However the gun did not shoot him, because he gets a save, which the attack profile of the weapon is not used(AP 2?) .

You guys are mixing the two rules. Here, follow this:

What caused the wound?

Gets Hot

What got hot?

Plasma gun

Is the Plasma gun a weapon?

Yes

What is it's strength?

7

hahaha, sucka, you be Insty Killed

 

 

By this reasoning, an IC with a PL. Pistol, would cause ID with his "extra attack", since the PL. Pistol caused the wound. Neverminding the resultant mess trying to keep track would cause, when a wound does not have a str assigned to it, it cannot cause instant death.

Interesting...wrong, but interesting. Pg 41 BGB actually tells us that we are to use the attackers S profile reguardless of the weapon used in Close Assault. It can be found under the heading What Stregnth to Use. I will re-type my argument with numbers and actual quotes for those too lazy to reference their own books.

Plasma weapons (and firearms!) cause a single wound on a "to hit" roll of a 1 (or 2 if rapidfired).  Therefore, the cause of the wound is a poor "to hit" roll, and not a "to wound roll", which would logically be needed to wound a S7 (of the plasmagun).  This wound causing mechanism is the same as the wounded on an exploding vehicle bail out - 4+ (rerolled if the vehicle moved fast), or a "rolled doubles" on a combat drug roll.

In fact, combat drugs are the best comparison, as they "cause wounds" and "cause instant death".

Plasma:

Roll to hit. 
If it is a miss, check to see if it got hot.  (1, or 2 if rapidfired)
If it got hot, you take A WOUND, but get a chance to save with your armour.

Combat Drugs

Roll a D6 for each combat drug result.
Check to see if there are doubles.
If there are doubles, you take A WOUND - no armor saves alowed.
Check to see if there are triples.
If there are triples, the model is removed as a casualty no matter how many wounds it has.

Glaive, you didn't fully quote the Instant Death rules. They say:

"If a creature is wounded by something which has a Strength value of double their Toughness value or greater. . ."


You seem to be hanging your hat on the fact that "something" means "weapon", which you have yet to prove.


BTW, by your argument a Railgun submunition round would cause instant death to all T5 creatures (and less) because the "weapon" has a Strength of 10 (at times).

The argument is bunk because you cannot prove "something" = "weapon".

@ Glaive

Exactly..... even then we are told what str. to use. I would agree with the ID assumption here, were it not for the save. This clearly shows that the statline for the plasma gun is not being used to wound.  Besides exploding Vehicles, I can't think of anywhere else a wound, automatic or rolled for is not given a str. If an exploding vehicle doesn't cause ID, I can't see how really hot steam does.

The rules say that certain weapons have a penchant "for overheating and badly singeing their user." On an 1 "the weapon has overheated and injured the model firing it". Overheated, not shot plasma at him. He hasn't pointed the barrel at his leg and shot himself. The gun hasn't exploded and flung plasma everywhere.

Whatever real world rationale you throw at this to support your argument, logical as it may be, the rules state "the model must make an armour save or it suffers a wound". 'A' wound. Singular. It does not specify strength, Instant death rules, anything else. If you fail the save, you take 1 wound, just the 1. It's usually enough to kill the trooper anyway so I dunno why everyone's getting so heated (excuse the pun) about Instant Death. Death is pretty instant for most Guardsmen anyway...

Question: Can the IG wargear item "Medi-pack" be used to ignore the first failed save per turn of a plasmagun overheating?

Premise 1: Medi -packs can't be used if the model has been inta-killed. "The medi-pack may not be used by any model which suffers instant death (see the Warhammer 40,000 rulebook)..." pg. 35 Codex Imperial Guard

Premise 2: When a plasmagun overheats the weapon wounds the user. "...the weapon has overheated and injured the model firing it. The model must make an Armour Save or it suffers a wound..."pg 30 BGB

Premise 3: When something is wounded by anything that has a Strength double their Toughness or more they are insta-killed. "If a creature is wounded by something which has a Strength value of double their Toughness value or greater and fail their save they are killed outright and removed as a casualty." pg. 27 BGB

Conclusion: Medi-packs cannot be used to save a T3 guardman from a plasma oveheat.

Hopefully, this is acceptable.

In response to Yakface:

Your argument would be true if they weren't seperate statlines. The weapon only has those stats when the weapon is firing that round. So, a plasma gun could have stats like
Plasma gun (hot shot) 24" S7 AP2 Rapid Fire
Plasma gun (light shot) 24" S3 AP5 Rapid Fire* *overheats

If it only overheats when firing the (correction) light shot than the wound was made by a weapon that does not have a T eligible for insta-kill. The weapon will never overheat when it has a T eligible for insta-kill so the point will never come up.

If a model was wounded by a submunition fired by a railgun than it will only be insta-killed if it is T3. Since the statline is seperate from the Solid shot statline we would not reference it.

To all else:

It looks like no one will ever play it as I have stated so don't sweat it.  As I stated in the begining of this thread I consider myself an intent player.  It just seemed to me like the intent was to not have the medic be used as a way around the plasma overheating.  I don't know the intent of the writers, and it appears that I'm alone on this anyways (Honkey Bro is an ork player so he will always vote "guard die").  So, that's good enough for me.  We will all continue to play it as it seems everyone does.  If anyone wants to continue this debate in the spirit of RAW discussion I'll be here since I still believe I'm right, but I don't want to be one of those "Embarked troops aren't on the table because the models aren't there" kind of guys.

It looks like no one will ever play it as I have stated so don't sweat it. As I stated in the begining of this thread I consider myself an intent player. It just seemed to me like the intent was to not have the medic be used as a way around the plasma overheating. I don't know the intent of the writers, and it appears that I'm alone on this anyways (Honkey Bro is an ork player so he will always vote "guard die"). So, that's good enough for me. We will all continue to play it as it seems everyone does. If anyone wants to continue this debate in the spirit of RAW discussion I'll be here since I still believe I'm right, but I don't want to be one of those "Embarked troops aren't on the table because the models aren't there" kind of guys.

No need to apologise if you're right. I can't comment on whether or not you are without a book in front of me, but from the quotes in your argument it seems that the actual words suggest you have a case, regardless of what the intent of the rule might be. Just because a few people on an internet forum get snotty should have no bearing on whether you actually have a solid case. After all, the guy who started the Tigurius thread got pilloried for two pages, but as soon as there was some actual debate, the trolls slunk away.

I would argue that it is the "Gets Hot" rule that is wounding the model not any particular weapon. And that rule doesn't have a Streangth value.

That is covered by my Premise 2. My numbered premises can be found about 3 posts up on tpage 2. To repeat my point:

The plasmagun caused a wound. How? It overheated. The relevant rules quotes are in the above thread.

OK, so where is the stat-line for a "overheat"? Because this isn't a wound dealt by a weapon; it's a wound dealt by the special rule of a weapon. You're making a realism assumption: that the weapon "plasma gun" is real, and that, like in reality, the damage comes from the weapon itself. As we're dealing with a game that has little to no pretension to reality, it doesn't directly follow that the weapon itself caused the wound.

Question... what other weapons have the "Get's hot" rule?

OK, so where is the stat-line for a "overheat"? Because this isn't a wound dealt by a weapon; it's a wound dealt by the special rule of a weapon. You're making a realism assumption: that the weapon "plasma gun" is real, and that, like in reality, the damage comes from the weapon itself. As we're dealing with a game that has little to no pretension to reality, it doesn't directly follow that the weapon itself caused the wound.

That's true, but the relevant quote from the rulebook is, under the Gets Hot rule, "the weapon has... injured the unit firing it." (p30)

it caused the wound but we are not being told that is has a str value, just that it auto wounded (this seems reasonable) and to take a normal armor save. If we assume that were supposed to apply the strength of the gun to the wound, then would we not also apply the ap to the wound? If thats the case then no one would get an armor save. If you had no armor save then the gets hot rule would not apply to itself and thus you would have proved that GW wrote rules in their book that had no meaning and can not be applied to the game.

This same kind of arguement could be made by a marine player, a missle launcher is strength 8, the frag round is str4. The effect of the frag round is str4, but the weapon itself is str8, thus any model with multiple wounds and t4 is autokilled if they are wounded by it.... because its str8 weapon, even though the shot is just str4. For the same reason that the str4 frag round is treated as strength4 and not strength 8, the overheating plasma gun is "auto-wounding" and not strength 7.

heh.. almost forgot. What is the reason that the frag round is just strength 4 and not strength 8..... because the rules say that the shot is strength 4 if you fire a frag round. And the rules say, if you roll a 1 on your plasma weapon, you take an autowound with a normal save allowed. The rules do not say that you shot yourself in the head with a plasma shot, neither should we infer that you took a full strength 7 ap2 shot on your person.

That's true, but the relevant quote from the rulebook is, under the Gets Hot rule, "the weapon has... injured the unit firing it." (p30)

And here we fall into the "mistaking fluff for rules" error. The quoted line is the fluff justification for a rule that punishes poor dice rolling; no actual weapon misfired and scorched the model.

Jeezum criminy.  Okay, almost no one will ever agree to the interpretation that the ID rule would be involved with the overheat rule.  In fact, if I were playing someone and they were really and truly insistant about it, there's a chance I'd just pack up and end the game there.  It would depend on how their attitude was.

Now, for strength to be involved, there would have to be a 'to wound' roll.  There is no such roll involved with overheating.  No strength is involved at all.  There is no statline for what caused the damage.  If there is no strength involved, there can be no ID rule.  The str. of 7 comes in when you point the gun at someone and they are on the business end of the shot.  You get someone with a BS of 5 and they hit on a 2, they still take the overheat hit when they roll a 2 and rapid fire, even though the shot hit its target.  The target getting flambed is the one worrying about the str. of 7, not the guy who fired.  He's just getting a face full of superheated coolant steam.

The rules seem pretty clear here.  There is some odd rule interpretting going on, and all I can say is prove it.  You're adding something to existing rules and there's nothing there to support your argument.  I don't think we need to prove that something isn't there, all you have to do is read the book.  You have to prove something is there.  Of course, this all amounts of ramming heads into each other and it would probably be best to just agree to disagree.

Posted By lord_sutekh on 02/22/2006 10:33 PM
And here we fall into the "mistaking fluff for rules" error. The quoted line is the fluff justification for a rule that punishes poor dice rolling; no actual weapon misfired and scorched the model.

Agreed. Like most rules in 40k, the first sentence does not provide any sort game mechanism, it simply provides an imaginative description of what the effect represents in the "real world".

The weapon getting hot does not cause the save, the "Get's Hot!" rule itself is the cause of the save.

Ki:  Firearms from the LaTD army have "gets hot".

And here we fall into the "mistaking fluff for rules" error. The quoted line is the fluff justification for a rule that punishes poor dice rolling; no actual weapon misfired and scorched the model.

Again, that may be true, but the sentence does state, "If a 1 is rolled, the weapon has... injured the model firing it." You say that it is fluff - that's fine, and may well be right, but by what criteria do you label it fluff, and having no bearing on the rules? The sentence mentions, at least in part, a game convention - rolling a 1. It doesn't use words like 'represent' or 'can be imagined', eg. "Rolling a 1 represents the weapon overheating and injuring the model firing it." So what reasons do you have for asserting that the language used in this sentence has no bearing on the rules?

As another example, the Barrage Weapons section on the next page has a sentence in its opening paragraph that could just as easily be defined as fluff. "Their [barrage weapons] greatest advantage lies in their ability to fire at targets that are out of sight." This sentence doesn't really reference any game rules or terms, yet it's the only sentence that tells us that Barrage weapons can pick a target outside of LOS. So why is this sentence not fluff, but the first one is?

Posted By Relic_OMO on 02/23/2006 8:20 AM
Again, that may be true, but the sentence does state, "If a 1 is rolled, the weapon has... injured the model firing it." You say that it is fluff - that's fine, and may well be right, but by what criteria do you label it fluff, and having no bearing on the rules?

Very well, we are given a cause-and-effect sentence. The cause is clearly a game term defined in the rules, "If a 1 is rolled". The effect, however is not, "the weapon has... injured the model firing it." We are not given a definition of what "injured" means. It could be anything from an insignificant flesh wound to instant death. While it is true that "wounded" is a synonym of "injured", we cannot simply replace a non-defined word with a defined one without fundamentally altering the state of the Rule-as-Written.

Without a game definition of injured, the clause "the weapon has... injured the model firing it" becomes meaningless ruleswise. Unfortunately, we must take the sentence as-is, without making any assumptions. If we do not make any assumptions, the "injury" does not do anything. You can "injure" a 40k model all day long, but the "injuries" will not affect it within the confines of the game.

Posted By KiMonarrez on 02/22/2006 6:56 PM
Question... what other weapons have the "Get's hot" rule?

Rail Rifles do too at present, although that will be changed in the new Tau Codex. And they're S6, so twice the Tau's T.

Again, that may be true, but the sentence does state, "If a 1 is rolled, the weapon has... injured the model firing it."

And I can stick my finger in the breach of a gun and have it slide shut, injuring me. However, I've not been shot with a bullet. The weapon may have injured the model firing it, but it does not say that the model was shot by his own gun.

Ork shootas/sluggas with "blasta" kustom upgrade suffer from "getting hot" rule as well.

Thanks for taking the evening shift for me Relic_OMO! Unfortunately, most are not actually ready to read the rulebook, instead accusing me of NOT reading the rulebook even after I went through all of the trouble of actually quoting the relevant sections for those too lazy to look it up themselves.

It seems the new argument is that the sentence telling us that the weapon injured the fire is now considered to be non-functional ruleswise. I'll accept that. So the overheat rule has injured the gunner not the weapon itself.

I guess I have a follow up question then: Are models wounded by the 'Template Weapons' rule when using a flamer, or are they wounded by the flamer using it's statline?

Actually, don't even bother answering that. The model was injured but he was not wounded. Fine.  No one cares what the RAW states anyways, right? Half of these posts are about how players would never play this way or they would never uphold this in a tournament. So, who cares? I mean, let's just say that magically we've proven beyond any doubt that the medic can't save plasma overheats. If no one is going to play by the RAW anyways than this is just a big waste of time.

Okay, I'm better now. We can continue the debate in the interest of RAW discussion. We will just know that no one cares.

No one cares what the RAW states anyways, right?

Except you're not reading the 'rules as written' yourself. The RAW states that the model takes a wound, period. End of sentence. You're adding that it must be at the Strenght of the weapon when the RAW says no such thing.

Agreed with Ghaz.

No I'm NOT! How many times are you people going to make me type this!

The model isn't wounded by the strength of the weapon.

The strength of the weapon is not used to determine the wound.

The wound does not use the streength of the weapon.

There's probably a few more ways to word it, but that's all I got for now. The model is wounded period, end, stop, halt all progress! Was he wounded by a weapon of S double his T or more? YES! Stick to arguing that the Plasmagun is not wounding him the 'Gets Hot' rule is. That's really the way out.

Except you're not reading the 'rules as written' yourself. The RAW states that the model takes a wound, period. End of sentence. You're adding that it must be at the Strenght of the weapon when the RAW says no such thing.

Not at all. He is not saying that the wound is at any Strength at all. By the rules for Instant Death, the wound does not have to be at a particular strength. All it has to be is to be caused by something that has the appropriate Strength. Had you read his argument on the last page you would not have made this error.

Essentially, by the rules, a T3 Guardsman does not have to take a T6+ wound to suffer Instant Death. All that has to happen is that the wound is caused by something with Strength 6+. If, for instance, there was a rule that when a Carnifex died, it fell down and wounded anything in base contact on a roll of 4+ by landing on it, that wound would, by the rules, cause Instant Death. Why? Because the wound would be 'caused' by the Carnifex, which has a Strength of 9. It wouldn't have to be a S9 wound, just caused by something that has a Strength enough to activate Instant Death.

That said, blue_loki's argument is good enough for me. 'Wound' is a game term, and the sentence that states that the plasma gun injures the firing model doesn't actually use the word 'wound'. I'm good with that.

I seem to recall that Chaos Cultists (from an older Chapter Approved article) also had weapons that got hot.




You know... to add a little more reality here... I recall in my weapons training for firing the old Colt Model 1911 that we were told to not put our off hand under the clip in the handle. Why? Sometimes the weapon would fire and have the clip shoot out causing blunt trauma to the hand... possibly breaking bones in the hand.

My point? It's a weapon misfire that can hurt you, that's not fatal. I even remember reading somewhere that weapon misfires due to insufficient powder to push the bullet through the barrel, thus causing a blocked barrel, generally did bad things to the firer... but normally less lethal effects than actually getting SHOT by the bullet.

Don't go injecting reality into the ruleset. There's just too many weird things that can actually happen in reality that just muddles things. Stick to what the rules say. The model is wounded because "Get's Hot" says so. If you want, treat it as being auto-hit and wounded by a St-x, AP-x weapon.


You can also take it from the other side... why stop at Weapon strength? Why not include the AP also? Why? Because then nobody would be getting that armor save the rules REQUIRE you to have if the plasma overheated.

Come on. Interpret it reasonably.