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So, everybody knows that orks are pretty tough. But my question is for the average ork boy, not the warboss or the nob, just your run-of-the-mill unarmored choppa boy: How tough are they? The reason I need to know is because I need to write believable fluff. The problem is is that the Rekhel system that I have layed out does not have an abundance of las weaponry. Now, I assume that while orks are pretty tough, they are not so ridiculously impossible to take down unless they are warbosses, mekboys, or nobs.

See, in my fluff, I was thinking about the guard using autoguns, but they'd have to be pretty strong autoguns to take down orks. But one must keep in mind that in fantasy a bunch of swordsmen are able to take down orks, and firearms are considerably stronger than swords. Still, you won't be taking down an Ork with an Uzi any time soon. So my idea was to have the average guardsman carry something akin in stopping power to an elephant gun (in particular I thought the 9.3X64mm Brenneke round in a semi-automatic rifle might do the trick). But I need feedback: Will this work?

I usually imagine them as gorillas that have no vital organs, can't get in shock and don't really care about injuries in general, but can still pass out and die if they lose enough blood.

You can still blow their brains out, though.

Regular orks do not die from a las gun shot that could kill a men.
Bolt gun bolts are lethal to most orks

Note that fantasy orcs are not space orks. (as far as we know )


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I have no idea what an elephant gun if it is used to kill elephants it should be able to kill an ork. Remember that orks use crude large ammo solid slug guns and are able to kill each other.

Armaggedon Orks Hunters use knives to kill orks. I am pretty sure any autogun weapon can kill an ork, or completely fail to harm her, depending on where and how you shoot…

 oldzoggy wrote:

I have no idea what an elephant gun if it is used to kill elephants it should be able to kill an ork. Remember that orks use crude large ammo solid slug guns and are able to kill each other.

Indeed, an elephant gun is the catch-all name for high caliber black power weapons able to take down things like elephants and rhinos. Of course, they wouldn't be using black powder in my story, they'd be using much more modern style weapons. If you want to get an idea of what I'm talking about, look up .375 Weatherby magnum and you'll see it compared to the .308 round and the 30-06 round. In addition, the heavy weapons teams will be toting a bare minimum of .50 cal machine guns.

I'll take your advice as a blessing: If orks are able to kill each other with their shootas, than there is no reason something as large as a 9mm rifle round couldn't do the same.

A elephant gun is a huge calibe rifle, very heavy bullet. Very powerful and recoil is equal to firepower

Its designed to stop a big animal dead very quick as the African big 5 are very dangerous even wounded.

one third tougher than your average human.

but seriously in fluff they are way tougher, they can get bits blown off them and keep going.

Did someone say "elephant gun"?



But most Imperial autoguns should be able to stop an Ork with a few hits, just like a lasgun. Autoguns use ridiculously oversized bullets to get the same stopping power as a lasgun.

Orks are generally considered very robust and durable but not immume to shooting by any means. Killing 1 Ork isn't considered too hard with standard 40k armaments but its being able to kill all the other Orks charging in with that 1 Ork that is the tricky part.

As for what modern day weapons would kill an Ork your going to want something that is explosive or very high caliber. Orks don't really feel pain and basically lack vital organs so the things that stop humans like going into shock isn't going to faze an Ork. As Broly said think of them like a Gorilla but I would say make it a Gorilla on PCP.

The Tau revived a dead one. Shadowsun? killed it again in hand to hand, (with out a suit) so not very.

They can have their heads chopped off, switched to different bodies, stitched back on and they are up and ready to fight again so long as a pain boy is around to do it. Or in Ghazzy''s case, he took a direct hit to the head from a heavy bolted turret. The exploding round blew off a big portion of his skull and brains. Couple of Deathskulls drag the still living or boy back to their camp and sold Ghazzy to Dok Grot. The moment Dok Grot was done Ghazzy was on his feet, stepped outside and killed the Deathskull Warboss.

I'd say they are pretty tough.

OP - may I introduce you to a personal friend of mine... the M41A pulse rifle... firing 10mm explosive tipped caseless, standard light armour piercing round.

I reckon that should take a chunk out of an Ork

 Skinflint Games wrote:
OP - may I introduce you to a personal friend of mine... the M41A pulse rifle... firing 10mm explosive tipped caseless, standard light armour piercing round.

I reckon that should take a chunk out of an Ork

... so you're introducing him to a shittier in every way boltgun?

the thing is... orks dont really feel pain like we do (so no shock), are immune to deseases and they regenerate pretty fast on a cellular level.
their blood is filled with somekind of algae stuff that clogs fast and prevents blood loss, their organs are duplicated a couple of times so you cant just nick a kidney and expect an ork to die... combine that with the fact that their immune system doesnt seem to reject other ork tissue (thats why you can do the old head/brain switcheroo) and you have a very tough to kill ork boy.

EDIT:
you have to understand, most people dont die instantly from gunshot wounds... they are only incapacitated, will faint because they will get in shock and then die because of bloodloss (if not treated). even if one of your organs got stabbed, the organ will bleed out and seize to function properly, causing you to die. similar a wound to your heart will stop your blood circulation and your brain will die due to lack of oxygen within seconds (which is the same reason you will die if you loose to much blood).

all that doesnt really apply to orks...

Ork Boyz seem to be pretty damn tough in general. It's gotta be said though, their main strength is numbers rather than individual hardiness.

Dismembering them only slows them down because they need those limbs to interact with things. To outright kill them, you need to destroy a significant chunk of the centre mass or keep them headless for thirty minutes or so.

However, an ork does not need to be dead to be incapacitated.

The easiest comparison would probably be Necromorphs from Dead Space, thinking about it. Only instead of mining tools, you're trying to kill them with guns (Dead Space: Downfall has some good scenes of how well that works).

And the assault rifle is a solid weapon in Dead Space, so...

The Ork is tougher than a human, but not as tough as a Space Marine.

Finding a consistent response to this question is a fool's endeavour; you can tell from the responses in this thread who is and is not an Ork fan.

 Ashiraya wrote:
And the assault rifle is a solid weapon in Dead Space, so...

The Ork is tougher than a human, but not as tough as a Space Marine.

Finding a consistent response to this question is a fool's endeavour; you can tell from the responses in this thread who is and is not an Ork fan.

Well, from what limited BL stuff I've read, an Ork's hide is tougher than a Marine's but the power armour is tougher still. If we were using a D10 system, you'd probably put a baseline human at T4, an Ork Boy at T5 and a Marine at T6.

Goffs will be much, much tougher than the Boyz of any other Klan.

 Psienesis wrote:
Goffs will be much, much tougher than the Boyz of any other Klan.

As I recall they are stronger, but the Snakebites are tougher. I vaguely remember reading something like that in the codex, but I could be entirely wrong.

Randomrolls wrote:
I was thinking about the guard using autoguns, but they'd have to be pretty strong autoguns to take down orks.

Extra strong or extra many shots should do the trick. IIRC "regular" autoguns use pretty low caliber but high-velocity caseless ammo and they can take special ammo too (not that guardsmen are likely to get any).

Besides, if it's loud it's got to hurt - that's ork logic for you. One of the Eisenhorn (?) stories has the inquisitor end up on some world where a Catachan regiment fights orks, and they've ditched the issue lasguns for local autoguns. According to the Captain it's not because it kills better but because the orks respect the sound of gunshots so it's easier to break them. edit: or it could have been the Last Chancers... really long ago I read either.

BrianDavion wrote:

 Skinflint Games wrote:
OP - may I introduce you to a personal friend of mine... the M41A pulse rifle... firing 10mm explosive tipped caseless, standard light armour piercing round.

I reckon that should take a chunk out of an Ork

... so you're introducing him to a shittier in every way boltgun?

Yes. One that can be carried by a regular guardsman.

And which eats ammo like it's going out of fashion. There is a reason the Imperial guard use lasguns for major, confused warzones and it's not because of stopping power.

It's because by two days in, anyone with slug weapons is catastrophically short of ammo whilst the army with las weapons is still advancing.

PDF forces (and hence cultists) use autoguns all the time, because making autogun rounds isn't hard. Carrying 60 rounds per soldier per expected day of fighting across interstellar space is ruinous on transport capacity - especially when you've got to also carry food, fuel, and - in some cases - water and air.

Still, you won't be taking down an Ork with an Uzi any time soon. So my idea was to have the average guardsman carry something akin in stopping power to an elephant gun (in particular I thought the 9.3X64mm Brenneke round in a semi-automatic rifle might do the trick). But I need feedback: Will this work?

Guardsmen with heavy-calibre guns and/or dum-dum rounds designed to cause maximum organic damage will indeed make a mess of the average ork. Orks aren't immune to gunfire - a lasbolt through the brain will kill one just as dead as a human. It's just that said lasbolt will lose a lot more power burning through the skull than it would that of a human. Essentially, a 'normal' ork is bulkier, heavier boned and suffers pain a lot less than humans, so comparing one to a classic 'elephant gun' target (something like an angry buffalo or smallish rhino) is not unreasonable.

I refer you to a warning given by the ultramarines about orks:

"And what's the other thing?"
"Sir?"
"....Sergeant?"
"Sir. Round count."
"Precisely. Whenever you face orks, there's always lots of them."

The 'elephant gun' would probably put an ork on his back. Ork guns are essentially just that.

The problem is that something resembling an 'elephant gun' is going to be relatively slow-firing (the human shoulder probably wouldn't tolerate firing it on full auto without a tripod or something) and you won't carry many such rounds. Both of these are a problem when facing a hundreds-strong Waaaggh! charge heading at you at speed.

There are canon accounts of Orks being revived by a Painboy after decapitation.

Orks are tough guys and will get back up more frequently than anything except maybe Necrons. Nobs and Warbosses are extremely durable and capable of surviving almost any wound.

There are Ork jokes where te punchline is literally severing your fellow Ork's hand. They have literally no sense of pain and can fight indefinitely if need be.

They are the most durable creatures in the universe, being able to survive on every type of Death World imaginable from Ice to Volcano world's.

A severed limb is nothing to an Ork, a bullet wound is mearly an invitation to fight to an Ork. Even if an Ork looks like his entire rib cage has been ripped apart by a shotgun blast, much like a decapitated viper, he can still kill you.

The best example of Ork durability that we can see is go into Space Marine the video game and play it on the max difficulty. An average Ork Boy can take a lot of damage, but head shots are pretty deadly. But remember Ghazzy survived a bullet to the brain pan so could any other Ork boy.

Were there not comparisons drawn between the average las weapon and .308's or 5.56's a while back?

 Zaku212 wrote:
Were there not comparisons drawn between the average las weapon and .308's or 5.56's a while back?

certainly none I know of, I thought it well established that Autoguns and lasguns are for all intents and purposes as "combat effective" as each other and the the 40k autoguns where wildly uppowered in comparison with todays firearms

 Zaku212 wrote:
Were there not comparisons drawn between the average las weapon and .308's or 5.56's a while back?

No. A lasgun is about equal to an autogun. Autoguns are weapons that fire ridiculously heavy ammunition that makes a 5.56 assault rifle look like a kid's toy. A gun firing 5.56 would be a stub gun in 40k standards. And while you can kill an Ork with a stubber, it is not going to be easy.

All those last stands in lore and books about Brother Captain Plot-armor McGuffin killing 1000 orks with his bare hands and a flask of bourbon I just ignore. The imperium is known for imagery over practicality and I wouldn't put it past them to tell tall tales. Heck the Space Wolves LITERALLY tell tall tales.

In the reality of 40k though I'd say anyone can do impossible gak. Heck there is even a squad of kommandos that infiltrated a manufactorum and STOLE a warlord titan. They stole. a warlord. titan. None of these stories I'd say accounts for how strong or smart a certain race/faction is.

Somewhere between a human and a marine. More on the marine side than towards humans.

 Ashiraya wrote:
The Ork is tougher than a human, but not as tough as a Space Marine.

Where is your canon example of a marine being grafted a whole new body and not dying? There is a reason Orks don't put their mortally wounded into dreadnought. It's because they don't have mortally wounded, they can always be healed. Though to be honest it is also because if Orks could be mortally wounded, other orks would call a mortally wounded ork “meal” .