Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Here we are. Page 19-20, Horus Rising.

Not like Ullanor at all. That had been an ordeal. This would be a test. Equal against equal. Like against like.
Except that for all its martial technologies, the enemy lacked one essential quality, and that quality was locked away within each and every case of Mark IV power armour: the genetically enhanced flesh and blood of the Imperial Astartes. Modified, refined, post-human, the Astartes were superior to anything they had met or would ever meet. No fighting force in the galaxy could ever hope to match the Legions, unless the stars went out, and madness ruled, and lawful sense turned upside down. For, as Sedirae had once said, 'the only thing that can beat an Astartes is another Astartes'. and they had all laughed at that. The impossible was nothing to be scared of.
The enemy - their armour a polished magenta trimmed in silver, as Loken later discovered when he viewed them with his helmet off - firmly held the induction gates into the inner palace. They were big men, tall, thick through the chest and shoulders, and at the peak of fitness. Not one of them, not even the tallest, came up to the chin of one of the Luna Wolves.
It was like fighting children.

False Gods, page 341-342.

Each warrior was armoured in fully enclosed plate, silver like the knights of old, with red and black heraldry on their shoulder guards. Their form and function were horribly similar to that of the Sons of Horus, and though the enemy warriors were smaller than the Astartes, they were nevertheless a distorted mirror of them.
Loken and the warriors of Locasta were upon them, the lead Brotherhood warriors raising their weapons in response to the wild charge. The blade of Loken's chainsword hacked through the nearest warrior's gun and cleaved into his breastplate. The Brotherhood shattered, but Loken did not give them a chance to recover from their surprise, cutting them down in quick, brutal strokes.
These warriors might look like astartes, but, up close, they were no match for even one of them.

[...]

They were courageous, these warriors of the Brotherhood, but they were hopelessly optimistic if they thought that simply wearing a suit of power armour made a man the equal of an Astartes.

These Brotherhood warriors are the most elite soldiers of the Auretian Technocracy, by the way.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kojiro wrote:
I think this needs fleshing out. That is to say how is the OP defining 'tough'?

Oh yes, I agree. Tough as in the biggest hit you can take without being one-hit-KOd, or who will die to death by a thousand cuts first? Long-time endurance or burst damage resistance?

You are all over the place Ashiraya.

Your library list of marine feats are all done while in power armor, which increases their strength and survivability exponentially. I particularly liked the SM that tanked a headshot with a helmet presented as a counter to orks surviving brain tissue loss.

Your latest offering (pg 3) is pure propaganda. It is poetic hyperbole. Even the contex is poor. The SM's are being compared to men, not alien monstrosities, many of which are tougher than marines.

This is like the best olympic athlete forging a medal for the one event he wasn't the very best at. It's weird.

Edit: also IMO space marines get a jillion novels which often contradict each other and the codex entries. They are, again IMO, tainted and almost always lose to other material where conflicts arise.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 TheCustomLime wrote:

Not feeling pain doesn't make you resistant to damage. This is a question of how many bullets you can absorb. Not whether or not you can enter the Salty Spitoon.

In all seriousness, there is a human medical condition that leaves people unable to feel pain. It does not make them able to take more bullets to the chest and walk away.

Immunity to pain actually does allow someone to keep going when they'd otherwise be incapped due to pain or shock. Of course, the orks back this up with tough hides, a ton of mass, less squicky internal organs and multiple redundancies (much like space marines, although the SM's have the important stuff and the orks just have extra muscle).

 Scrabb wrote:
You are all over the place Ashiraya.

Your library list of marine feats are all done while in power armor, which increases their strength and survivability exponentially. I particularly liked the SM that tanked a headshot with a helmet presented as a counter to orks surviving brain tissue loss.

Your latest offering (pg 3) is pure propaganda. It is poetic hyperbole. Even the contex is poor. The SM's are being compared to men, not alien monstrosities, many of which are tougher than marines.

This is like the best olympic athlete forging a medal for the one event he wasn't the very best at. It's weird.

Edit: also IMO space marines get a jillion novels which often contradict each other and the codex entries. They are, again IMO, tainted and almost always lose to other material where conflicts arise.

So it's not evidence because you don't like it?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 TheCustomLime wrote:

Not feeling pain doesn't make you resistant to damage. This is a question of how many bullets you can absorb. Not whether or not you can enter the Salty Spitoon.

In all seriousness, there is a human medical condition that leaves people unable to feel pain. It does not make them able to take more bullets to the chest and walk away.

Immunity to pain actually does allow someone to keep going when they'd otherwise be incapped due to pain or shock. Of course, the orks back this up with tough hides, a ton of mass, less squicky internal organs and multiple redundancies (much like space marines, although the SM's have the important stuff and the orks just have extra muscle).

I wonder how much of the fluff around marines should be treated as propoganda?

Also for that matter I guess that around orks aswell?

TheWanderer wrote:
I wonder how much of the fluff around marines should be treated as propoganda?

Also for that matter I guess that around orks aswell?

Well some people are fond of saying it's all Imperial point-of-view regardless of Codex but that makes little sense to me.

Generally you have to pick and choose what you believe in due to inconsistencies.

TheCustomLime wrote:Immunity to pain actually does allow someone to keep going when they'd otherwise be incapped due to pain or shock

Why would not feeling pain stop shock from occurring?


Ashiraya, most people in the thread are trying to compare unarmoured Space Marines with unarmoured Orks (presumably Boyz). Therefore feats inside power armour aren't that relevant. Want is needed is feats outside power armour or ones showing what injuries a Space Marine can sustain once they penetrate it.

How about thoughts on 2 scenarios?

1. Unarmoured Ork vs Unarmoured Space Marine

2. Power Armoured Ork vs Power Armoured Space Marine

Skimmed through the posts, so apologies if this sounds trite, but the rules seem to do a pretty good job of describing these things...

An average Ork is about as tough to wound as a Space Marine... but wears crap armor, so is more susceptible to high rate of fire from weaker guns. In other words, without armor, it's a crap shoot. Without armor, Marines and Orks are roughly equivalent. Orks are basically muscle bound freaks who just flat out ignore their injuries. Marines are muscle bound freaks whose bodies actively repair their injuries almost instantly. Both Marines and Orks can shrug off blows that would kill a baseline human.

With armor... different story entirely. Marine armor is great and allows Marines to survive shots that would normally kill them. Ork armor is more or less useless against anything other than a basic melee attack. The majority of ranged weapons will punch right through Ork armor.

Thus, they're just as tough as a Marine, but far easier to kill. Their real strength is in numbers.

SomeRandomEvilGuy wrote:

TheCustomLime wrote:Immunity to pain actually does allow someone to keep going when they'd otherwise be incapped due to pain or shock

Why would not feeling pain stop shock from occurring?

A lot of the stopping power of a weapon is how it makes the brain and body react to the damage it inflicts. A single bullet through the body is almost never going to instantly kill something unless it hits a very critical part but the effect that trauma has on the body can cause a reaction that puts the person out of commission. Its why people on certain drugs aren't affected by pepper spray or tasers and that a low caliber bullet is less likely to put down a person in a pcp fueled rage. The bullet does damage all the same but the body isn't reacting to that damage on a psychological/neurological level.

Orks are probably wired to not really respond to body damage in the same way as a human would (considering they where basically engineered to be weapons it makes sense that this would be the case) so cutting off a limb or putting a few bullets into an Ork isn't likely to make it fall down and pass out or roll around in pain. I think actual "shock" is from blood loss causing the body to start shutting down systems but I have no idea how Ork physiology responds to mass blood loss.

I do not have any material of an unarmoured Marine fighting Orks. It does not really happen, as there is no good reason for a Marine to abandon his armour before battle, so you are unlikely to find any.

However, the examples on page 3 are relevant because it shows Marines fighting enemies with equal wargear, and on p2 the falling example is good as armour does not protect well against falling damage (note the marine falling kilometers and just walking away! That is a lot of newtons.)

 Ashiraya wrote:
I do not have any material of an unarmoured Marine fighting Orks. It does not really happen, as there is no good reason for a Marine to abandon his armour before battle, so you are unlikely to find any.

However, the examples on page 3 are relevant because it shows Marines fighting enemies with equal wargear, and on p2 the falling example is good as armour does not protect well against falling damage (note the marine falling kilometers and just walking away! That is a lot of newtons.)

I would suggest the last one is artistic license

 TheCustomLime wrote:


So it's not evidence because you don't like it?

I knew this would happen. My throwaway line about where I'm coming from as a consumer of the fluff is the only point defended against, all others ignored. I gave a counterargument for the examples given. I then gave an opinion on the novelizations. I'm sorry I don't like the same thing as you.

You do know there are inconsistencies in the fluff right? Specifically different BL books and their depictions of SM abilities. I'm not writing off an entire section of the fluff. I'm bemoaning the glut of SM tripe.

 TheCustomLime wrote:


If you unload an AK into someone they'll die regardless of their ability to say "ouchie". An Ork can and probably does keep going after taking wounds that would otherwise incapacitate a human. But they'll die to fatal injuries all the same. Immunity to pain=/=increased resistance to damage.

What are fatal injuries for an Ork? You keep comparing them to humans as if they were just green jock versions of them. Orks die to fatal injuries. That's a tautology. Space Marines die to fatal injuries. Horus "died" due to a "fatal injury".

Did anyone say Orks don't die? Your body will shut itself down when you are bleeding to death to slow death down. That's called shock. Orks don't bleed out half as easily as humans and don't slow down while they're doing it. That makes them tougher.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ashiraya wrote:
I do not have any material of an unarmoured Marine fighting Orks. It does not really happen, as there is no good reason for a Marine to abandon his armour before battle, so you are unlikely to find any.

However, the examples on page 3 are relevant because it shows Marines fighting enemies with equal wargear, and on p2 the falling example is good as armour does not protect well against falling damage (note the marine falling kilometers and just walking away! That is a lot of newtons.)

Yeah the falling one is good. I admit I didn't read that one.

No one doubts SM's are tough as all get out. I just think Orks can take more naked trauma, whether in one big hit or death by a thousand cuts.

I think a naked SM will kill a naked Ork due to the SM's much higher tactical acumen, intelligence and dexterity. Strength would be roughly equal and Ork tougher but dead. IMO. Naked toughness doesn't matter on the battlefield so functionally SM's are much, much tougher than Orks.


Oh yeah OP. You have my blessing. Those guns could kill an Ork. Just emphasize frequent cases of needing four or five of those shots if not to the head. See, Orks also have variable toughness in fluff. My idea that Orks are tougher than SM's lies in their upper examples being more hardcore than existing SM upper examples.

TheWanderer wrote:

 Ashiraya wrote:
I do not have any material of an unarmoured Marine fighting Orks. It does not really happen, as there is no good reason for a Marine to abandon his armour before battle, so you are unlikely to find any.

However, the examples on page 3 are relevant because it shows Marines fighting enemies with equal wargear, and on p2 the falling example is good as armour does not protect well against falling damage (note the marine falling kilometers and just walking away! That is a lot of newtons.)

I would suggest the last one is artistic license

And I would suggest the entire Beast Arises series is artistic license but running around like that won't get us very far, will it?

 Scrabb wrote:

 TheCustomLime wrote:


So it's not evidence because you don't like it?

I knew this would happen. My throwaway line about where I'm coming from as a consumer of the fluff is the only point defended against, all others ignored. I gave a counterargument for the examples given. I then gave an opinion on the novelizations. I'm sorry I don't like the same thing as you.

You do know there are inconsistencies in the fluff right? Specifically different BL books and their depictions of SM abilities. I'm not writing off an entire section of the fluff. I'm bemoaning the glut of SM tripe.

Your counter-arguments was that you didn't like the lore so therefore it doesn't count.

ex. "Your latest offering (pg 3) is pure propaganda". This is speculative at best. You don't know if the information is a factual presentation of events or Imperial bull gak.

 TheCustomLime wrote:


If you unload an AK into someone they'll die regardless of their ability to say "ouchie". An Ork can and probably does keep going after taking wounds that would otherwise incapacitate a human. But they'll die to fatal injuries all the same. Immunity to pain=/=increased resistance to damage.

What are fatal injuries for an Ork? You keep comparing them to humans as if they were just green jock versions of them. Orks die to fatal injuries. That's a tautology. Space Marines die to fatal injuries. Horus "died" due to a "fatal injury".

Did anyone say Orks don't die? Your body will shut itself down when you are bleeding to death to slow death down. That's called shock. Orks don't bleed out half as easily as humans and don't slow down while they're doing it. That makes them tougher.

@ CustomLime, I argued against Ashiraya's SM quotes as proving SM's more durable than Orks because the SM's were using power armor. I even gave an example from the SM who had a face wound he shrugged off. The key point was that no damage to the brain was established and he had a helmet for the blow. How can you not see that? You quoted that part of the post in your reply.


"Pure propaganda." It comes from the SM's thoughts. They are brainwashed soldiers. I also addressed that the SM's were greater in power armor than ordinary humans in power armor, which is kind of obvious. That does not demonstrate that SM's have greater survivability in Power armor than Orks in power armor.


"Difficulty to take down." I'm glad we found that common ground. And you're right. Pain receptors, or the lack thereof, don't increase or decrease actual structural damage done to an organism. I hope I never said anything that implied that. If I have, and I obviously at least posted something that could be interpreted as saying that (due to you arguing against that with me), I apologize for that. Pain resistance allows longer battle performance and so counts towards toughness as we've now agreed?