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I may have missed an FAQ about this somewhere, but I didn't see one. This came up in discussion at a game on Thursday.

The Serpent Shield basically states that if the Wave Serpent suffers unsaved wounds from "a weapon", damage is reduced by one to a minimum of one.

Is this applied to each damage roll made by a weapon, or just the total wounds inflicted by the weapon itself. The three players (including myself) had just read it as 'per damage roll' mainly because I hadn't played many multi-shot/damage weapons. I believe we were all wrong and it is indeed "per weapon"?

Let's say for arguments sake a Predator Autocannon scores 3 hits and I fail all of my saves. Is the damage then: 2, 2, 2 or 3, 3, 2? I've only ever really played against things which are mostly single D6 damage, but I'd like to make sure I'm not abusing this. Has it been explained anywhere?

Thanks.

 Elbows wrote:
I may have missed an FAQ about this somewhere, but I didn't see one. This came up in discussion at a game on Thursday.

The Serpent Shield basically states that if the Wave Serpent suffers unsaved wounds from "a weapon", damage is reduced by one to a minimum of one.

Is this applied to each damage roll made by a weapon, or just the total wounds inflicted by the weapon itself. The three players (including myself) had just read it as 'per damage roll' mainly because I hadn't played many multi-shot/damage weapons. I believe we were all wrong and it is indeed "per weapon"?

Let's say for arguments sake a Predator Autocannon scores 3 hits and I fail all of my saves. Is the damage then: 2, 2, 2 or 3, 3, 2? I've only ever really played against things which are mostly single D6 damage, but I'd like to make sure I'm not abusing this. Has it been explained anywhere?

Thanks.

You missed an FAQ. From the Rulebook FAQ:

Q: If a model has an ability that halves damage suffered (rounding up) such as Marneus Calgar’s Armour of Antilochus ability, how is that resolved when I am attacked by several attacks at once? Do I halve the total of all the damage suffered, or do I halve the damage inflicted by each attack separately?
A: Halve the damage suffered by each attack separately.

Remember that wounds are allocated one at a time. For example, if Marneus Calgar was wounded by four boltgun attacks (Damage characteristic 1) and each saving throw resulted in a failure, Calgar would suffer 0.5 wounds (which is rounded up to 1) four times, and would therefore lose 4 wounds.

EDIT: I'm leaning towards agreeing with that.

Even the FAQ is slightly vaguely worded - as a single "burst" from a Predator Autocannon would be different than say three or four bolt gun "attacks". And the wording on the Serpent Shield simply says "wounds from a weapon".

ARGLEBARGLE I neglected to read up.

The Wave Shield isn't halving, it's reducing by 1 to a min of 1. That applies to every individual damage done. Four 1 damage shots will still do 1 damage, while one 4 damage shot will become one 3 damage shot. You don't total the amount of damage a weapon does, it always does damage individually per shot.

That's precisely my question though.

It says, for example, the FAQ that "four boltgun attacks", so how is that different from one Predator AC "attack". While the type is 2D3, is this referred to as 2D3 "attacks" or is the Predator AC just carrying out one single attack?

Would you simply characterize each allocation of wounds as a single attack? I agree, this makes sense to me, but I'm more looking for officially worded backing for that. The Marneus Example is slightly different.

 Elbows wrote:
That's precisely my question though.

It says, for example, the FAQ that "four boltgun attacks", so how is that different from one Predator AC "attack". While the type is 2D3, is this referred to as 2D3 "attacks" or is the Predator AC just carrying out one single attack?

Would you simply characterize each allocation of wounds as a single attack? I agree, this makes sense to me, but I'm more looking for officially worded backing for that. The Marneus Example is slightly different.

4 boltgun attacks can come from 2 bolters.

 Elbows wrote:

Would you simply characterize each allocation of wounds as a single attack? I agree, this makes sense to me, but I'm more looking for officially worded backing for that. The Marneus Example is slightly different.

Yes, each allocation of wounds is a single attack. Read the core rules. Pg.7 : 4. resolve attacks. You can speed this up by rolling all the dice together. If the predator wounds 3 times and the serpent fails all 3 sv throws the shield reduces each wound by 1 to a total of 6.

Okay. That settles it. Well that makes me feel better since I haven't been cheating since I started playing 8th. Good. Thanks.

I have another question. What if the serpent gets hit by linebreaker bombardment and suffers mortal wounds ? The stratagem says that the vindicators weapons cannot fire this turn, therefore the damage (oddly) doesnt come from their weapons. The shield shouldnt work, or does it ?

p5freak wrote:
I have another question. What if the serpent gets hit by linebreaker bombardment and suffers mortal wounds ? The stratagem says that the vindicators weapons cannot fire this turn, therefore the damage (oddly) doesnt come from their weapons. The shield shouldnt work, or does it ?

Mortal wounds are always applied one at a time. They can't be halved or reduced (at least not by the wave serpent shield). "Each mortal wound inflicts one point of damage on the target unit. "

Yeah, I think any mortal wounds completely ignore the Serpent Shield --- it's description says nothing about Mortal Wounds and thus shouldn't affect them.

 Elbows wrote:
Yeah, I think any mortal wounds completely ignore the Serpent Shield --- it's description says nothing about Mortal Wounds and thus shouldn't affect them.

That isn't why they aren't affected. Mortal wounds don't need to be specifically called out, they are normal wounds with a few extra special rules. Feel No Pain effects and anything else interacting with wounds or damage still work with mortal wounds.

They aren't affected because they do 1 damage each and the shield has a "to a minimum of 1" caveat.

Right, i forgot about mortal wounds counting as 1 each.