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I was wondering what actually happens when someone fails a gets hot roll in the fluff; does it burn their hands off, does a large dose of radiation emit and fries the guy?
Has there ever been a guy who has killed themselves by using a plasma gun/pistol/cannon in any book? If not, how do you picture it happening?

My understanding is that components of the gun meltdown, which then breaches containment of the ammunition flask. BOOM.

I want to say that someone's plasma pistol exploded in some IG story, but cannot for the life of me remember which one.

Hark carries one throughout the GG series, but never seems to have any issue with his (and only once, I think, runs out of juice for it).

It could be any reason as with anything "gets hot"

Id like to think the weapon fizzles out and the guy holding it takes it back to the field mechanic to get fixed rather than him dieing in a plasmaee death.

I always kind of pictured it like the one weapon in Halo that also suffers from "Gets Hot". Vents on the weapon spring open and shoot boiling-hot gases back at the firer once the safety threshold has been exceeded. If you're a guy in PA, no big deal. If you're in flak? Well, life sucks, and then you burn to death.

I remember a UM novel where the gun exploded.

 Psienesis wrote:
I always kind of pictured it like the one weapon in Halo that also suffers from "Gets Hot". Vents on the weapon spring open and shoot boiling-hot gases back at the firer once the safety threshold has been exceeded. If you're a guy in PA, no big deal. If you're in flak? Well, life sucks, and then you burn to death.

That's what I like to think too. My best friend made an observation one day.


"it's hot enough to burn a spartan in power armor? that must be Really freaken hot!"

I prefer the image of the thing venting to cool down before exploding catastrophically

FFG has a good range which I like to use. It goes from minor overheating, to things like a complete meltdown, or the gun exploding.

Plasma weapons turning into hand grenades isn't really that common in the lore as it is the TT, but I do recall it turning into a plasma grenade best lobbed at the enemy. I remember one Guardsmen dying, and it taking the hand off a CSM in another story.

Makes sense though, Guardsmen or Eldar should drop instantly from that due to the lack of protection/sufficient protection. Only thing I would expect to survive the radiation is an Exarch or a Space Marine wearing a helmet.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Tiger9gamer wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
I always kind of pictured it like the one weapon in Halo that also suffers from "Gets Hot". Vents on the weapon spring open and shoot boiling-hot gases back at the firer once the safety threshold has been exceeded. If you're a guy in PA, no big deal. If you're in flak? Well, life sucks, and then you burn to death.

That's what I like to think too. My best friend made an observation one day.


"it's hot enough to burn a spartan in power armor? that must be Really freaken hot!"

Human plasma weapons burn at a temperature of around twenty million degrees Fahrenheit, IE the same temperature of a solar flare IIRC.

Wouldn't the existence of something that hot and of that size be enough to essentially go nuclear and in a relative distance besides personal space?

Probably, IRL, but IRL science has very little to do with 40K.

 Desubot wrote:
Wouldn't the existence of something that hot and of that size be enough to essentially go nuclear and in a relative distance besides personal space?

While I am sorely undereducated when it comes to the physics of incredibly intense heat, I'm pretty sure that given the small size of a plasma shot, it lacks the mass to fry everything in the vicinity like a miniature star would.

The mass isn't the issue, it's the convection of heat. It could be sub-atomic, but if it were 20 million degrees, it'd be lethal in an Earth-like atmosphere for kilometers.

It really would depend on how much and how fast it burns out id figure (though im not a physicist)

I know some animals can create some rediculus heat within the frame of less than a instant.

but plasma guns are not the size of mantis shrimps

Edit: Also dont think it works like a plasma cutter as the plasma is created within the ark of a electrical current. it seems like the plasma gun creates a bunch of ultra heated gas within a magnetic field that some how travels and explodes at the target destination.

One would imagine that these guys would be smart enough to not fire the weapon until it explodes.

I mean, modern troops are trained not to melt their machinegun barrels by overuse. Seems like it would be fairly easy to not kill yourself with the gun, heh.

I kinda liked the Necromunda rules for them. Low power shots at a lower S and save mod. High power shots required a turn of cooldown.

Well, lighting is hotter than the surface of the sun (IIRC), but it is there for such a small amount of time it has no affect out of where it hit.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
One would imagine that these guys would be smart enough to not fire the weapon until it explodes.

I mean, modern troops are trained not to melt their machinegun barrels by overuse. Seems like it would be fairly easy to not kill yourself with the gun, heh.

I kinda liked the Necromunda rules for them. Low power shots at a lower S and save mod. High power shots required a turn of cooldown.

Or they could be like the Germans in WWII and just handed a sack of replacement barrels and told to go nuts.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
Well, lighting is hotter than the surface of the sun (IIRC), but it is there for such a small amount of time it has no affect out of where it hit.

indeed you can get some crazy temps even in machines today (god i love using plasma cutters. such a satisfying wooooooosh!)

The real question is how exactly a plasma gun works in 40k and what a malfunction could look like.

 Desubot wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
Well, lighting is hotter than the surface of the sun (IIRC), but it is there for such a small amount of time it has no affect out of where it hit.

indeed you can get some crazy temps even in machines today (god i love using plasma cutters. such a satisfying wooooooosh!)

The real question is how exactly a plasma gun works in 40k and what a malfunction could look like.

Pretty simple. Like with a lot of plasma weapons in fiction, I believe it's just a ball of plasma held together in an electromagnetic jacket.

Well i was looking for more specifics like mass, volume and temp of the plasma ball. then you could really calculate out the actual damage it can do.

 Desubot wrote:
Well i was looking for more specifics like mass, volume and temp of the plasma ball. then you could really calculate out the actual damage it can do.

It's 40k. There is no consistent calc. This is the same universe that may have 19 Megajoule Lasguns depending on what Megathules are.

 Psienesis wrote:
I always kind of pictured it like the one weapon in Halo that also suffers from "Gets Hot". Vents on the weapon spring open and shoot boiling-hot gases back at the firer once the safety threshold has been exceeded. If you're a guy in PA, no big deal. If you're in flak? Well, life sucks, and then you burn to death.

This. Those vents on the barrel component emit gas in the Space Marine video game (which is canon!) when you trigger the cool down.

I recall fluff that indicates the gun doesn't blow up or become unusable. There was something about the rifle out living the user!

Besides, the fact that it effectively damages the user while the gun itself suffers no ill effect (since it can get hot multiple times on the same user provided the user survives his saves) it makes sense that it is an emergency venting and not a critical failure.

The orks mulled about in the ruins across from the space marines. Brother Cecil aimed his plasma cannon, and the squad tensed as he pulled the trigger. At first, nothing. No explosion, no screaming, no dead xenos, the only sound being the humming from Cecil's cannon. The humming grew louder and louder as the gun malfunctioned and began to melt down. Cecil looked at the gun in his hand just moments before the container was breached, and the plasma expanded in a small explosion. As the smoke cleared, all that remained was the charred husk of Brother Cecil.



thats what I think happens

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
Well, lighting is hotter than the surface of the sun (IIRC), but it is there for such a small amount of time it has no affect out of where it hit.

It is, but a plasma weapon is (compared to a lightning bolt) around for much longer (especially over comparative distances). The ball of plasma exists for a not-inconsiderable span of a few seconds... that's enough time for it to transmit a goodly portion of its 20+ million degree temperature into the surrounding air, which then transmits that into anything in its airspace. Even if it was only 1% of its heat, that's still 200,000 degrees. That's fething hot.

Anything it hits is gone.

Well, seeing as the gun remains usable after getting hot if it didn't kill the user, I can't imagine it fails in a way that destroys the gun. At the most extreme example in game terms, an Iron Hands character could have a gun that gets hot an infinite number of times (IWND wound recovery beats Gets Hot wound dealing).

I think the emergency heat vent makes sense. This is the imperium, the gun is probably more valuable than the wielder.

Wargear is always more valuable than its wielder, regardless of what and who.

This is how I always imagined it would go down (on a pistol, at least).

Best case: the gun overheats and is inoperable for a while.

Worst case: it takes your hand(s) off at the wrist. Ouch.

I think it happened a couple of times in Dead Men Walking. They were fighting necrons and really having to pour the shots out, hence the guns overheated or the little reactor inside failed and vented all over the user. They aren't a perfected science. But yeah, pretty sure someone else just picked up the gun and kept shooting, lol. It's a risk reward mechanic for an overgrown board game. Don't over think things in 40k, or it becomes severely flawed quickly