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Here I am, sitting on a chair () wondering if there's any point to Gets Hot! within 40K any more...

Gets Hot! was always criticised as being a bit 'OTT', in that a gun over-heating could kill the user, such a Plasma Pistol over-heating then killing one of humanities super-soldiers.
Furthermore, with the abundance of vehicles and cover within 5th Edition, we are seeing less and less players use Plasma Weapons and instead focus on Meltaguns, Missile Launchers or Flamers; particularly for the comparative points difference.

Whilst I like Plasmaguns; they are a fun weapon, capable of ruining tanks and infantry alike. They are still flawed and more expensive than their typical counterparts who excel in the current 40K environment.

So I ask, does Gets Hot! still have a place within 40K?
If there wasn't Gets Hot! would you consider Plasma Weapons to be worth taking? The game is constantly changing and adapting with each new Codex, Meta and Edition, but does Gets Hot! still belong in modern 40K?

You decide...

Well they could do what they did with the tau?

Have it at strenght 6 with no overheating?

Maybe they could let you choose how you'll fire it?

I find that with my Chaos marines that Gets Hot! is no problem due to my 3+ armor, but on my friend's guard on the other hand... In my lists I run three squads of marines, one with Melta, Fire, and Plasma. The plasma is great for killing not only Terminators and Monstrous Creatures but regular marines too! Two plasma guns is three dead MEQ's at rapid fire range, not to mention miscellaneous wounds from Bolter shots. I seriously get so much mileage from those bad boys it's not even funny... With the abundance of Melta they should simply add "Gets Hot!" to them as well.

I think there are still plenty of roles for Gets Hot! weapons. Lets see what I can think of...

Las/Plas Razorbacks are plenty popular, as are Leman Russ Executioners. Plasma Cannon Dreads and Sentinals slightly less so. Technically, these weapons all still have "Gets Hot!" From this alone, my argument could be that the pace of Gets Hot! weapons in 5th edition is on vehicles. However, I have other examples.

I field a unit Blood Angels Honor guard with 4x Plasma Guns. They have proven to be the bane of many a Monstrous Creature, and even Mephiston. It's the built in Sanguinary Novitiate that makes them worth taking in this configuration. FNP is a great way to prevent losing models to bad Gets Hot! rolls.

Cato Sicarius has a Plasma Pistol and FNP from the Mantle of the Suzerian. I'm planning on taking him in a list I'll be doing soon. Not because of the plasma pistol, per say, but I won;t be afraid to shoot it since he's got FNP as well.

I've got a friend who plays a Chaos Space Marine list with a Death Guard/Nurgle theme. About half his squads of Plague Marines have 2 plasma guns and a combi-plasma. Again, because of the presence of FNP.


I sometimes use a unit of Wolf Scouts to outflank. They've got a Meltagun and a plasma pistol. It's a decent way of having a second chance anti-rear AV weapon, should the Meltagun miss.

Special Issue Ammunition "Vengeance Rounds" have Gets Hot! I'm sure the most popular type of Special Issue Ammunition for Sternguard to shoot is Hellfire, but against Marines, they'd surely do more damage than they'd take from bad Gets Hot! Rolls.

Finally, I see plenty of IG Mech Vet lists where the about half the squads are packed full of melta, and half are full of plasma weapons, for balance and diversity.

From the examples above, I think Gets hot has it's place on units that are not affected by it at all, (in the case of vehicles) have ways to mitigate potential damage, (like Marines with FNP) or on units that are expendable from the get go (like Gaurdsmen) or can die so long as they complete the task they are given (such as my unit of Wolf Scouts).

Do they still make kits for the Razorback with lascannon and plasma guns or do you have to make it on your own? I heard it was only on the Mark 1 Razorback. Back when the model still had a Space Marine manning the turret.

You need to take some things with a grain of salt, and realize its a tabletop game. In a more true-to-environment mythos, a plamsa gun would 'get hot' every 1000 or so times of firing, not one out of 6.

Of course, psychers would also not get attacked by a warp beast 1/16 times when they used a psychic power. It would make the 40k version of hogwarts a very dangerous place to go to school.

labmouse42 wrote:You need to take some things with a grain of salt, and realize its a tabletop game. In a more true-to-environment mythos, a plamsa gun would 'get hot' every 1000 or so times of firing, not one out of 6.

Of course, psychers would also not get attacked by a warp beast 1/16 times when they used a psychic power. It would make the 40k version of hogwarts a very dangerous place to go to school.

I do take it with a grain of salt, I'm not criticising the system or saying that Gets Hot! shouldn't exist or that it should be exactly as it is in the fluff. I'm just writing my observation that it appears to have a much (much) smaller role within the current environment...

Commander Endova wrote:*snip!*

That's the problem I think, you've only been able to identify 2 real classes of models that use gets hot: Those with FNP/negating ability and vehicles. To me, this, although well observed on your behalf, further shows the relative niche of Gets Hot! and its limited use, particularly compared to the cheaper and more widespread Flamers and Meltas.
Although, you have identified an additional class (FNP) that I hadn't thought of...

labmouse42 wrote:Of course, psychers would also not get attacked by a warp beast 1/16 times when they used a psychic power. It would make the 40k version of hogwarts a very dangerous place to go to school.

That's....kinda the point. Psykers (unlike the Gets Hot! rule) have a very real chance at having their heads asploded by Daemons. The select few we see in-game have undergone alot of training and were sanctioned for battlefield use, and even then only Librarians can feasably fend off daemons infecting their minds, Sanctioned Psykers are killed on the spot if they show any signs of being possessed.

And the Gets Hot rule doesnt have much of a place now other than to make Plasma weapons seem a tad bit different from the other weapons you have, especially vehicle mounted weapons (as the Gets Hot! is only there to remind you it's still a plasma weapon, and has no bearing in-game). The Lost and the Damned use to have Gets Hot! basic weapons, which made them a lot more fun to play (each one was basically a guardsman with a bolter, but could fry himself at any moment).

The large shift in the meta comes from the cover saves rule instead of target priority. If the latter returned in the 6th edition, we could see Plasma weapons becoming more useful.

Why not just re-write the rule?

If a 6 is rolled to hit then the Plasma Gun overheats midway through the shot and is treated as Strength 5 instead.

I guess some people don't like bad things happening on a 6 (instead of a 1), but reducing the Strength still weakens Plasma Guns as an option, but without making them more/less viable based on the wielders save, FNP, etc.

Well the Plasma gun is still one of the most costly special weapons in the game. Lowering it's strength only encourages the proferation of melta guns.

A corresponding points drop would go with the modified rule.

IMO, to make things interesting, remove Gets Hot! from plasma and add it to melta weapons instead. That'll shake up things!

Gets Hot! is an example of the "toy soldier" kind of rule which GW sometimes presents in 40K, such as TLoS and blast markers.

To some degree it is stupid and could be got rid of, however it would need a slight points adjustment to the weapon's cost to reflect its increased value.

Since there are already good alternatives to the plasma gun, and people are using them, I'm not convinced it really matters. SMs and IG already have access to more special weapons than anyone else. Wherefore the need to give them even more viable options?

I take a LOT of plasma weapons and rarely suffer Gets Hot! deaths. Especially with marines.

A 5% chance of loosing a 31 point model (inc. plasma gun) is safe enough, but what you risk is valuable. But what you gain is so much more. Nothing, not bolt gun nor battlecannon, puts a stop to a trygon like a squad of plasmaguns do.

I think a better rule would be "gets hot" is only when you rapid fire the plasmagun and if any of the dice is a one it overheats and only once. so 2 "ones" doesn't mean 2 wounds only 1.

I think that would make sense. because you are rapid firing the weapon risking it to overheat.

I like Plasma but Get's hot does put me off.

I'm guard so don't get a 3+ save, I find myself either sticking medics or Carapace on Squads with plasma in an attempt to keep them alive, but this gets costly quickly. I have fairly bad luck with gets hot so generally don't take much plasma and when I do I think hard about when to use it and alway try to get a BiD order in there as well to reduce the odds further. It will always have a place in my armies just because of it superior range and rate of fire (compared to the melta) but I do wonder if it is over costed for IG.

I say that plasma is preferable in any situation where you aren't shooting at a vehicle or plan to charge. The biggest advantage of plasma is the number of shots it can pump out. My Company command squad is loaded with plasma and I have some vet plasma and storm trooper plasma too. Plasma is pretty good at popping transports or most non landraider types of tank if you can find av11 side armour. I don't worry about overheats that much because my guardsmen are used to dying anyway. The twin link order also improves their chances of surviving a lot agains vehicles and MCs.

I like to take a mix of plasma and melta on different squads so that one squad can support anothers weakness. As a guard player though I have the bodies to specalise like this, not sure if you can do similar things with marines or not. Marines seem to be better at being generalists.

Commander Endova wrote:I think there are still plenty of roles for Gets Hot! weapons. Lets see what I can think of...

Las/Plas Razorbacks are plenty popular, as are Leman Russ Executioners. Plasma Cannon Dreads and Sentinals slightly less so. Technically, these weapons all still have "Gets Hot!" From this alone, my argument could be that the pace of Gets Hot! weapons in 5th edition is on vehicles. However, I have other examples.

Vehicles don't suffer from "Get's Hot!" (p31)

I don't think Gets Hot is a big deal. Even if they took it away from plasma guns (and kept them S7) I'd still use melta for the tank killing ability. If they gave meltas Gets Hot, I'd *still* use melta.

I think a better question is "Does rapid fire have a place in 40k?". I'd rather see them make rapid fire guns assault instead. If plasma guns were assault 2 .... that'd be awesome. Then I would use them, even with Gets Hot.

I think it's rediculous that people drop the use of plasma on their lists because they're wary of 'gets hot' wounds.
As mentioned before FNP is a great way to mitigate that danger, however low it may be.
If your dice are that bad that you lose your PG users all the time.. good luck with the rest of the game!

Plasmaguns are wonderful on Plague Marines. They tend to have PFs to deal with tanks (mainly because the initiative penalty means that more or less the PF's drawback is nonexistant), while Plasma guns are usually good enough to blow transports (with the notable exception of the wave serpent, but that thing basically is a full on tank). PGs are best used with Rhinos, so they can't assault anyways and can always rapid fire the hell out of whatever they run into. 3+ save and FnP means that the 1/6 wound suddenly turns into 1/36 chance of actually dying from one (It's 1/18 if rapid firing, but then again, not likely the marine is actually going to get off anywhere near 18 PG shots, so the chances of him dying are slim to none).

Noisy_Marine wrote:I think a better question is "Does rapid fire have a place in 40k?". I'd rather see them make rapid fire guns assault instead. If plasma guns were assault 2 .... that'd be awesome. Then I would use them, even with Gets Hot.

I would support this change. Some units like Tau are not affected much. My Chaos Marines really want to get into CC so this limits their shooting ability quite a bit. Of course, this might unbalance a few things

PG's are great on anything as long as you run enough of them. In my Mech guard army they have a starring roll. I run 10 PG's in most lists 1000 points and up. Yeah, they kill themselves, but when running 10 it usually takes awhile before attrition catches up enough, and by then I'm in turn 4 or 5 and have had melta in you face for the last turn or 2. Couple that with unloading them from a chimera and using Bring it Down against vehicles and MC's in order to twinlink, so that I get to reroll most of those ones. PG's rock.

I'm packing tons of Plasma over melta in my wolves and am planning to go overboard with plasma in my I.G.

I think 40k has moved on from the fluff but I never fear gets hot results and think they add a nice element of fun and chance to my games.