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Since Poxwalkers can't pass a save roll unless they are in cover, do you just skip the save roll altogether and immediately roll for Disgustingly Resilient? Or is there a reason to roll the save first, even though you can't actually roll a 7+ without cover?

I have several board games that specifically state that you still do certain steps of a turn even if it isn't possible to succeed, so that's where my question is stemming from. Seems like it would be obvious to just not roll any save for a PW and just do the DR roll, but I just want to make sure I'm not missing something.

No, 40k does not have a rule forcing you to do things that don't matter

 alienux wrote:

I have several board games that specifically state that you still do certain steps of a turn even if it isn't possible to succeed

How.....tedious....

As stated, the rules don't have a specific mention either way. As long as you make it clear to your opponent that you're skipping the roll, it should be fine. Ofc you always have the option of just rolling a bucket of useless dice if your opponent demands you do so.

I agree it would be pointless and tedious, but as I said, there are other games that require this, so I wanted to make sure we weren't missing a rule somewhere. We've been ignoring the save roll for Poxwalkers for the most part (we've rolled it a few times out of habit). Thanks for the answers.

I'm fascinated by the idea of a game that encourages randomly generating constant values... is there an example?

Here's an idea for a house rule:

Before the game begins, either player may roll 13 dice and calculate the standard deviation of the result. If you choose to do so, ignore this rule and start the game normally.

If you're using a predetermined set of random values, it's important to process them whenever the rules tell you to. For example, Fantasy Flight has several games with a sort of "dice deck" used to generate random results for different sized pools of options. For example, you might have three categories of units, four players, and twelve territories on the board. Thus you have a 12-card deck with each territory printed once, each unit type four times, and each player three times. Even if a random selection won't have a consequence, it's important to keep cycling the pool of results so that you reshuffle at the right time.

Obviously, none of this applies to dice rolling because each result is independent of others. But sometimes there are ways for a "pointless" result to be consequential.