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An enemy uniit consists of a single 1W character. It receives simultaneous wounds from Fabius Bile, a Cultist Champion and five Cultists, failing all of it's saves. Who, if anyone, gets a Boon?

Fabius Bile and the Chaos Cultists do not share weapons, so they create Wound Pools at different times.
The Cultists do not have the Choas Boon Special Rule attached to their attacks, so they create a different Pool to the Champion's.

Allocate these Pools carefully....

Yes, but if they either all fired together, or they had been modified to have the same I and were not forbidden from throwing punches at the character, they could make hits at the same step.

The codex clarifies a similar situation in which there is a single champion of chaos, but I'm wondering what happens if, say, a dozen Chaos Lords with Plasma Pistols attached to a unit with a Champion find Sgt Piñata standing in a clearing on his own. Is it Boons all round?

The controlling player decides the order in which they fired, if they fired during his turn.

It doesn't matter when the Hits occur, for the order in which the Wounds are Allocated is the important factor.

This is because Rules are always resolved sequentially, even if they are occurring at a simultaneous point in the timeline. As each Wound is Resolved individually, we will encounter a situation where a single successful Wound will 'kill' a 1 Wound Model. After that point no more Wounds can be Allocated to the Model, so it is no longer possible for any other 'Fired Shot' to inflict damage to the target to trigger multiple occurrences of this Wound. Models with a Wound Characteristic greater then 1 could be hit by two shots with the Rule from the same Wound Pool, but Rules exist to grant both attackers a Boon in that situation.

That being said, you did touch on a way to make it a possible outcome:
Identical Models.

By having two identically equipped Chaos Lords one can ensure the values on the Wounds are also identical. As Wounds are Pooled based on having identical Values, it would leaves us with a single Wound Pool to allocate from and no real way to know which attack came from which Model. The only advise we can give in that situation would be to use different colored dice or some other method to trace which attacks originate from which Models. While technically not a Rules as Written requirement, it does make it possible to ensure this Special Rule is applied only to the Models which actually attacked the enemy (Character.)

Doesn't the rule cover this? I could have sworn there was something about Chaos Boons and multiple wounds dealt at once.

HappyJew,
Not at home so going from memory of what I looked at this morning.
It is true that there is a sentence informing us what to do if multiple Wounds are Allocated Simultaneously to a Model but can not be applied to this situation for two main reasons.

The more obvious is the fact the Opening Poster limited the scenario to a 1 Wound Model, so it will be Removed as a Casualty the moment it fails the first Saving Throw. As the Rule in question relates to multiple Wounds, and I can not remember if the exact formatting uses the word Suffers, Allocate, or Unsaved, it can only be triggered in situations where a Model has multiple Wounds. Being unable to Allocate additional Wounds to the Model after it is Removed as a Casualty will ensure that it only ever has one unsaved Wound allocated to it.

The second, less obvious, is the ridiculous use of the word simultaneous within the sentence. Because we Resolve these wounds in a Sequential format by default, the only way to ever have multiple Wounds allocated 'simultaneously' will require the involvement of Advanced Rules changing the Wounding process. It is unlikely for this to occur, however, as it would require Wounds to be Allocated to a Model which has already been Removed as a Casualty. Even the obvious Weapons which have access to Rules which allow multiple Wounds off a single 'Hit,' as Simultaneous as we can get in the Rules, all encounter this issue... once we Resolve the first 'Hit' we no longer have a Model left to Resolve against.

I can not fathom a situation where this Rule will be evoked... aside from two Models with identical Profiles and Wargear, both wielding the Chaos Boon Special Rule, Wounding an Enemy with a greater-then-1 Wound Characteristic.

JinxDragon's got it! I neglected to cross-reference the exact rules for wound allocation. I'm still used to fast rolling where you roll a load of green dice for plasma and white dice for bolters and then take all saves at once for your loner target.

Regarding the 'Identical Models' route to play 'hide the pea' with the identity of the firer of the lethal shot: is (1) that specific route even necessary to cause confusion, and (2) does it matter?

The rules require you roll to hit with all weapons of the same type. If Kharn the Betrayer, an unnamed Slaaneshi Sorcerer, an unnamed Warpsmith and an unnamed Champion all have a PP, aren't they all shooting in the same step and (assuming no misses) throwing an identical S7 AP2 hit into the wound pool?

This could get equally tricky with a squad of Havocs and Terminators, where it's quite possible for a Champion to add two shots to a bucket of identical S7 AP2.

My gut feeling is that the best resolution would be a correction to the Boon rules, to the effect of: if a Champion of Chaos contributes to a Pool of Wounds, a Boon is awarded if the player announces that a Wound is the one the Champion inflicted as the Wound is allocated and the Wound then kills the enemy Character; the number of Wounds declared for a Champion cannot exceed the number of Wounds they contributed to the Pool.

In lieu of such a RAW clarification, it seems that this common sense approach is the best way to keep track of things and keep the game running. RAI-wise, it seems reasonably fair to assume that a Champion of Chaos, when ordering his squad to fire on a squad of do-gooders, will stay his own combi-plasma until his comrades have cut down for him a clear shot at the nauseatingly clean-armoured Sgt Piñata.

It perhaps gives Chaos units with little weapon variance a slight advantage, but I don't have a problem with that; one can imagine them having a better weapons drill than a unit with lots of different ballistic properties.

To begin I would like to clarify why I hate the Shooting Sequence, the constant name change to the 'Shot' as it passes through each Step!

As each Wound Pool, generated at the To Wound step, is separated based on Special Rules one has to keep track of each one that is in play throughout the shooting sequence. That one clause of Wound Allocation ensures that two identically named Weapons fired by different Models will rarely cause the conflict you are describing. Take for example the Havocs and the Terminators, aside from never being in the same Unit together by default, only the champions in each of these Units will have to worry because the other shots all lack the 'Champion of Choas' Special Rule. In situations where multiple Independent Characters are joined together there are other values that might be different on the shot and require us to keep track of them individually... even different Ballistic Skills on the Models.

In those situations, if you have used a different coloured die for each of the champions, we can still keep track of each Model is using which version of the Special Rule to ensure the right Model gets the correct Boon.

Wee update: it seems if identically named weapons have various special rules, you put them in different wound pools and have to allocate entire pools. So, in a unit of Chaos Terminators with Combi-plasmas, allocating one squaddie's shot means you have to allocate them all before the champion's shot gets to be allocated.

I pretty much don't bother with trying to figure out boon rolls from the shooting phase unless it's very obvious. I also make my champion the grenade-thrower whenever I can so that he's using a different weapon and goes into a different pool.

Avoid confusion. Get into combat and issue a challenge!

Fabius is I4 and Cultist I3. The saves would have been allocated at a different time.

Son of aY3ti wrote:
Fabius is I4 and Cultist I3. The saves would have been allocated at a different time.

Let's just assume a psychic power is in play enabling the rule mechanic in question to be discussed without having to fine-tune the hypothetical.