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I've been going back and forth on how to best implement envenomed weapons in 40k. For those unfamiliar, the current take on the rule is basically that the weapon never needs worse than X+ to wound a non-vehicle target. So a drukhari splinter rifle will always wound both a marine and a guardsman on a 4+ despite only being S1. My understanding is that this is meant to represent the idea that the exact location and severity of the wound inflicted doesn't really matter. The wound might have just been a minor injury to the arm, but even a small scrape has exposed the target's body to the poison thus giving it a chance to overwhelm their system.

Now that's not a terrible approach, but it does seem weird that the effectiveness of the poison is so variable from shot to shot. Why is the first poisonous scratch sufficient to kill one ork, but it takes multiple scratches to down the ork standing next to him? I suppose this could be meant to represent different amounts of poison making it into the target's system, but it still feels a bit weird. Any thoughts or preferences on better ways to represent poison weapons in 40k? Or is the current rule perfectly fine? A few slap-dash possible alternatives:

1.) Poison grants to-wound rerolls. Sort of a nod to both plague weapons and older versions of Poison that granted rerolls to-wound if your strength was high enough, the idea here is that poison weapons would generally have more "normal" strength values (drukhari splinter weapons would probably be S3 for instance), but the poison would allow you to reroll certain to-wound values. Or even all to-wound values. For splinter weapons specifically, this feels like it could be handled by basically just giving them a flat strength value of like, 4 or something, but it might be more useful for the various melee weapons out there whose poison rule doesn't really help them out against sufficiently low Toughness targets.

2.) Poison is a debuff. When those splinter rifles and poisoned knives try to kill you, they're just straight up trying to kill you the old-fashioned metal-in-meat way. But glancing blows happen. Rather than being focused on killing the target, the poison is there to steal the strength of more resilient enemies so that they're easy to finish off. Mechanically, I could see this being represented by poison weapons having a chance to impose a negative status condition on the target. Something like to-wound rolls of 6 that are succesfully saved cause a Poison Token to be placed next to the unit. At the start of each of their controlling player's turn, units with Poison Tokens can roll a d6 per token. On a roll of (Toughness) or less, they remove the token. Units with Poison Tokens suffer -1 to their to-hit rolls and halve their Movement. Alternatively, you could go more complicated and have a table with stacking debuffs based on how many poison tokens a unit has. I feel like this one is probably too complicated and doesn't make sense for the poisoned weapons that are meant to be outright lethal, but it would be fitting for something like splinter weapons that are designed to leave their targets alive to be taken to Commorragh.

3.) Poison = higher Damage? Probably my most straight-forward suggestion. Instead of being a special rule, poisonous weapons could just have a higher Damage stat against non-vehicles. The idea being that the knife/splinter rifle wound hurts you the conventional way, but then your body also suffers the damage done by the poison. This one would be pretty easy to implement, and it feels fluffy, but it also feels like it might be too niche in its utility. Like, D2 instead of D1 isn't going to matter much when you're shooting at eldar guardians or tau fire warriors, and it seems like the poison should work at least as well against them as it does against astartes.

4.) Poison-as-Special-Ammo? This one makes more sense for drukhari (and specifically splinter weapons) than for poison weapons in general. The basic idea is that if you bothered to put poison on your weapon, you probably had a job in mind for it. So maybe your splinter rifle can opt to fire sleepytime splinters that will ruin the coordination and reflexes of a carnifex that's too tough to kill. Maybe you have the extra killy splinters that are D2 or get +1 to-wound. Maybe you can load up the rarer shots like soul-seeker ammo or metallotoxin rounds that hurt vehicles but both only fire a single shot because you can't waste the rare ammo. Maybe there's an extra-hurty poison that ups the Power From Pain benefits for drukhari units standing near a model wounded by such ammo. Just spitballing.

Or maybe poison is fine as-is and I'm overthinking things.

You're not wrong that a lot of poison weapons lack bite. Rerolls of 1 to wound is fine and wouldn't be broken. Movement debuff? Cool.

I'm not cool with even more multidamage weapons though.

I think the current Poison implementation is fine, as an abstraction. I wouldn't mind seeing your Special Ammo take on Dark Eldar Splinter Weapons, but as a general rule, wounding non-Vehicle and non-Titanic models on X+ is fine.

Crazy idea:

Step 1: Give Poison Weapons a normal Strength.
Step 2: Poison special rule halves the Strength against Vehicles and Titanic units.
Step 3: Super Special Poison (aka Poison 2+) gives +1 to Wound except against Vehicles and Titanic units.

Or do the opposite:

Step 1: Give Poison Weapons a lower than normal Strength. This is pretty much were we are now for range weapons.
Step 2: Poison special rule doubles the Strength except against Vehicles and Titanic units.
Step 3: Super Special Poison (aka Poison 2+) gives +1 to Wound except against Vehicles and Titanic units.

Nice and easy. Extra bonus in that you can now apply Strength Bonuses to Poison Weapons and they mean something.

I like alextroy's approach. A S3 weapon which becomes S6 shooting infantry is a cool way to do it.

However, the concern is that this will become too powerful.

You could make poisoned weapons wound on high values (EG wounds on a 5+) and with a potential cascade effect:

"For each unsaved wound a non-VEHICLE or TITANIC unit takes from a POISONED weapon, the unit immediately takes 1 hit from the same weapon (roll to wound and save as normal). Wounds caused by these subsequent hits can only be assigned to models in the unit which have lost wounds to this attack."

It's a bit wordy but it basically gives you the chance to finish off a model. Another alternative would be:

"POISONED: After a unit which is not VEHICLE or TITANIC has taken one or more wounds from this weapon, if that unit contains one or more models which have less than their starting number of wounds, roll a D3 (or D6 for the better poisoned). If the result of the roll is equal to or over the number of wounds remaining on the injured model with the least wounds remaining, then that model is slain."

So it's quite a quick one, with potentially high damage. EG:

a unit of dark eldar with splinter rifles shoots at a unit of somethingorothers with 3 wounds each. They get 4 wounds and one goes through, leaving one model injured but not dead. The dark eldar player rolls a d3, and rolls a 2. This is equal to the wounds the last model has left, so the model is slain.

Another unit shoots a 2+ poisoned weapon at a carnifex, and gets 2 wounds through, leaving the 'fex with 5 wounds. They roll a d6, and get a 4, so the carnifex is not poisoned. If they rolled a 5+, the carnifex would have been slain.


Poisoned weapons get a generic anti-infantry statistic, EG S3, so shootign the big gribblies is unlikely to work, but might finish one off.

I think it would be a really fun and easy to play option for poison.

 some bloke wrote:
I like alextroy's approach. A S3 weapon which becomes S6 shooting infantry is a cool way to do it.

However, the concern is that this will become too powerful.

You could make poisoned weapons wound on high values (EG wounds on a 5+) and with a potential cascade effect:

"For each unsaved wound a non-VEHICLE or TITANIC unit takes from a POISONED weapon, the unit immediately takes 1 hit from the same weapon (roll to wound and save as normal). Wounds caused by these subsequent hits can only be assigned to models in the unit which have lost wounds to this attack."

It's a bit wordy but it basically gives you the chance to finish off a model. Another alternative would be:

"POISONED: After a unit which is not VEHICLE or TITANIC has taken one or more wounds from this weapon, if that unit contains one or more models which have less than their starting number of wounds, roll a D3 (or D6 for the better poisoned). If the result of the roll is equal to or over the number of wounds remaining on the injured model with the least wounds remaining, then that model is slain."

So it's quite a quick one, with potentially high damage. EG:

a unit of dark eldar with splinter rifles shoots at a unit of somethingorothers with 3 wounds each. They get 4 wounds and one goes through, leaving one model injured but not dead. The dark eldar player rolls a d3, and rolls a 2. This is equal to the wounds the last model has left, so the model is slain.

Another unit shoots a 2+ poisoned weapon at a carnifex, and gets 2 wounds through, leaving the 'fex with 5 wounds. They roll a d6, and get a 4, so the carnifex is not poisoned. If they rolled a 5+, the carnifex would have been slain.


Poisoned weapons get a generic anti-infantry statistic, EG S3, so shootign the big gribblies is unlikely to work, but might finish one off.

I think it would be a really fun and easy to play option for poison.

That's a lot of words for "You occasionally deal 1 or 2 extra damage."

It's also quite random, relying on you rolling the d3 well, and injuring but not killing a multi-wound model.

 JNAProductions wrote:

 some bloke wrote:
I like alextroy's approach. A S3 weapon which becomes S6 shooting infantry is a cool way to do it.

However, the concern is that this will become too powerful.

You could make poisoned weapons wound on high values (EG wounds on a 5+) and with a potential cascade effect:

"For each unsaved wound a non-VEHICLE or TITANIC unit takes from a POISONED weapon, the unit immediately takes 1 hit from the same weapon (roll to wound and save as normal). Wounds caused by these subsequent hits can only be assigned to models in the unit which have lost wounds to this attack."

It's a bit wordy but it basically gives you the chance to finish off a model. Another alternative would be:

"POISONED: After a unit which is not VEHICLE or TITANIC has taken one or more wounds from this weapon, if that unit contains one or more models which have less than their starting number of wounds, roll a D3 (or D6 for the better poisoned). If the result of the roll is equal to or over the number of wounds remaining on the injured model with the least wounds remaining, then that model is slain."

So it's quite a quick one, with potentially high damage. EG:

a unit of dark eldar with splinter rifles shoots at a unit of somethingorothers with 3 wounds each. They get 4 wounds and one goes through, leaving one model injured but not dead. The dark eldar player rolls a d3, and rolls a 2. This is equal to the wounds the last model has left, so the model is slain.

Another unit shoots a 2+ poisoned weapon at a carnifex, and gets 2 wounds through, leaving the 'fex with 5 wounds. They roll a d6, and get a 4, so the carnifex is not poisoned. If they rolled a 5+, the carnifex would have been slain.


Poisoned weapons get a generic anti-infantry statistic, EG S3, so shootign the big gribblies is unlikely to work, but might finish one off.

I think it would be a really fun and easy to play option for poison.

That's a lot of words for "You occasionally deal 1 or 2 extra damage."

It's also quite random, relying on you rolling the d3 well, and injuring but not killing a multi-wound model.

It gives a guarantee of killing any model with 1 wound left after being wounded (how often does "oh if I'd only got one more wound!" come up?). It gives a 2/3 chance of killing a wounded model with 2 wounds left, and a slim chance of killing a model with 3 wounds left.

You could make the 2+ poison 2d3, so it guarantees 2 wounds, makes up to 4 wounds likely, and could hit 6.

I wrote it with a lot of words, but it could probably be condensed by someone better at rule-ese than myself!

Is that per gun, or per unit?

Because if it’s per gun, it slows the game down a ton.
If it’s per unit, it’s of such a small impact it ain’t worth including.

You could probably simplify it to just kill off wounded models with 3 or less Wounds remaining after the unit has been injured by one or more splinter weapons. But that still feels off to me. I like the notion that the poison is doing a little extra damage to finish the job, but it feels weird that this rule would only reflect the benefits of the poison on the last guy to get hurt. Given that one unit shooting another is meant to be an abstraction of shooting at the entire squad, it seems like whatever the benefits of poison are, they should apply evenly across all your foes; not just the guy that had saves assigned to him last.

So with all that in mind, you could probably represent the same thing by just giving poison weapons a higher damage stat. You killed 3 marines instead of 1.5 because you were shooting poisonous rounds at the entire squad, and the 3 guys who got knicked fell prey to the poison. Of course, both your suggestion and the higher Damage suggestion run into the problems from suggestion 3 of my opening post. Should poison matter against a guardsman? It seems like the answer should be 'yes,' but maybe this is one of those area where the gameplay benefits from just letting the weapon have a benefit that doesn't kick in against every single enemy.

Step 1: Give Poison Weapons a lower than normal Strength. This is pretty much were we are now for range weapons.
Step 2: Poison special rule doubles the Strength except against Vehicles and Titanic units.
Step 3: Super Special Poison (aka Poison 2+) gives +1 to Wound except against Vehicles and Titanic units.

Talk me through how you're picturing this working. Isn't this pretty much just the current poison rules but more complicated and prone to weird interactions with 9th edition's wound chart? I guess the benefit would be that an S4 poison could be more likely to wound a guardsman than a marine. But then, S4 poison would also be pretty bad at wounding an MC like a carnifex. It might be hypocritical of me to say after wanting poison to impact guardsmen and such, but it kind of feels like poison should remain good against monsters? Maybe I'm just letting tradition get in my way.

Ignoring drukhari for a moment, I feel like you generally put poison on a weapon when you:
A.) Don't want to actually kill the target. You wannt to knock it out for whatever reason.
Or...
B.) Want to make your weapon more lethal. You can't be sure you'll be able to stab your target to death, so the poison ensures that even a minor injury might be able to finish the job if you're killed, your target escapes, etc. Or if your target is a carnifex whose chitin is too thick to blast through to get at the important bits.
Or...
C.) You just want the target to suffer. Maybe to send a message. Maybe to lower morale. Maybe because you're drukhari (oh, I guess the drukhari are back).

C and A are both mostly a drukhari thing. B seems the most likely motivation for the calidus, tyranids, etc. And the most fitting special rule for that might just be a higher Damage stat. Possibly paired with the existing poison rule so that you can hurt a carnifex with a minor scrape.

I guess my view is that poisonous weapons en-mass shouldn't have a huge impact.

a bunch of dark eldar shoot some marines. One marine is punctured by so many splinters that he just dies from the trauma. The other is only injured, but then succumbs because of the poison.

I wanted to find a way to make it a bit impactful, but not just "they have more damage", because that just sucks. I also didn't want it to slow the game down. I thought a roll to have a chance of killing off one extra wounded dude would be a cool little mechanic to add!

Also, don't forget how this will be abused. 3 units of dark elves will be splitting fire everywhere, chipping off a wound from as many different units as possible and then letting them die from poison.It won't be a game changer, but not every weapon needs to be! It could be just the difference between having one guy left on an objective, or not, or killing the enemy warlord, or not.


As a further option, you could say something like:

"The splinters from these weapons might seem to inflict only scratches at first, but they can fester in moments to slay even a space marine.

Any unit which has suffered one or more wounds from a POISONED weapon this turn suffers -2 to leadership and -1 to (I forget the name, the test you do after failing morale), to represent the unit succumbing to their poisoned wounds."

Any unit which has suffered one or more wounds from a POISONED weapon this turn suffers -2 to leadership and -1 to (I forget the name, the test you do after failing morale), to represent the unit succumbing to their poisoned wounds."

Something like this kind of exists, actually. There's no Ld penalty, but the Poisoned Tongue trait makes enemy units take -1 to Combat Attrition tests if they were hurt by splinter weapons.

Stepping back, maybe poison is fine as-is? None of the alternatives feel like a huge improvement over what we have now. It's just that what we have now doesn't scream "poison" either.

I actually enjoy the idea of the poison weapons being S3 by default and they double the strength firing at non-vehicles.

EviscerationPlague wrote:
I actually enjoy the idea of the poison weapons being S3 by default and they double the strength firing at non-vehicles.

Not sure I'm a fan of that.

As of 7th edition, a Carnifex was 4 wounds (I believe) with a 3+ save. T6 or T7, think it was T6. But it took 27 shots from a Marine's Bolter to do one wound, 108 to kill it.
Same edition, a Splinter Rifle was three times as effective-hits the same, saves the same, but wounds on a 4+ instead of only on a 6. So, 9 Splinter shots could do a wound-and 36 killed it.

Fast forward to now.
An AP0 Marine Bolter needs the same 27 shots to do one wound to a T7 2+ Carnifex, though now it's 243 shots to kill it. At AP-1, halve those numbers to 13.5 and 121.5. At AP-2, cut them by a third to 9 and 81.
A Splinter Rifle needs 18 shots to do one wound, so it's only SLIGHTLY better. It's actually worse when dealing with a Bolt Rifle or a regular Bolt shot in the Tac Doctrine.

Making them S6 against Carnifexes would mean they're literally no better than a Bolter against them. That's always been the advantage of Poison-monsters and other high Toughness gribblies-and I think it works just fine.

 JNAProductions wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:
I actually enjoy the idea of the poison weapons being S3 by default and they double the strength firing at non-vehicles.

Not sure I'm a fan of that.

As of 7th edition, a Carnifex was 4 wounds (I believe) with a 3+ save. T6 or T7, think it was T6. But it took 27 shots from a Marine's Bolter to do one wound, 108 to kill it.
Same edition, a Splinter Rifle was three times as effective-hits the same, saves the same, but wounds on a 4+ instead of only on a 6. So, 9 Splinter shots could do a wound-and 36 killed it.

Fast forward to now.
An AP0 Marine Bolter needs the same 27 shots to do one wound to a T7 2+ Carnifex, though now it's 243 shots to kill it. At AP-1, halve those numbers to 13.5 and 121.5. At AP-2, cut them by a third to 9 and 81.
A Splinter Rifle needs 18 shots to do one wound, so it's only SLIGHTLY better. It's actually worse when dealing with a Bolt Rifle or a regular Bolt shot in the Tac Doctrine.

Making them S6 against Carnifexes would mean they're literally no better than a Bolter against them. That's always been the advantage of Poison-monsters and other high Toughness gribblies-and I think it works just fine.

What you're describing is also the fault of the current wounding system that probably needs some rework anyway.

Wyldhunt wrote:

Step 1: Give Poison Weapons a lower than normal Strength. This is pretty much were we are now for range weapons.
Step 2: Poison special rule doubles the Strength except against Vehicles and Titanic units.
Step 3: Super Special Poison (aka Poison 2+) gives +1 to Wound except against Vehicles and Titanic units.

Talk me through how you're picturing this working. Isn't this pretty much just the current poison rules but more complicated and prone to weird interactions with 9th edition's wound chart? I guess the benefit would be that an S4 poison could be more likely to wound a guardsman than a marine. But then, S4 poison would also be pretty bad at wounding an MC like a carnifex. It might be hypocritical of me to say after wanting poison to impact guardsmen and such, but it kind of feels like poison should remain good against monsters? Maybe I'm just letting tradition get in my way.

Ultimately, there are two questions you want to answer around a Poison Rule:

What targets do you want the rule to impact the most?

How do you balance the rule?

The biggest issue I see with the current rule of Always Wounds on an X+ is that the rule has the biggest impact on the toughest targets and the lowest impact on the softest targets.

Take the Splinter Rifle (24" RF1 S2 AP0 D1 Poison 4+). This is supposed to be the Drukhari equivalent of the Bolter (24" RF1 S4 AP0 D1) and the Shuriken Catapult (18" Assault2 S4 AP-1 D1 Shuriken). The Splinter Rifle is only better than a Bolter against T5 or higher targets that are not Vehicles or Titanic. It is actually worst than a Bolter against T3 targets. Is that what Poison does?

Taking my proposed Double Strength route, the Splinter Rifle (S4 vs non-Vehicle, non-Titanic targets) is now better against a T3 target and just a good against a T4 target. It is worst against a T5 or better target.

But you could increase the Strength of Splinter weapons by one each. The Splinter Rifle is now (24" RF1 S3 AP0 D1 Poison ), which is basically a Lasgun/Autogun with the Poison Rule. It wounds T3 on a 2+, T4 & T5 on 3+, T6 on a 4+, and T7 to T11 on a 5+. It is much more measured in it effects and mows down light targets with a brutal efficiency, except against Vehicles and Titanic where it is flashlight status.

I guess it is down to what we consider poisoned should be doing.

To my mind, a poisoned weapon should be finishing off anything which was wounded by it, because that's what poison does - it turns a scratch into a fatal amount of damage.

we also should remember that splinter weapons are also shooting splinters, which are reasonably capable of killing something by virtue of being pierced by something sharp that is moving quickly.

I stil feel like it would make hte most sense for poisoned weapons to finish off wounded targets after they've shot. It'd be stale and overpowered to make them higher damage vs non-vehicles, but it makes sense to me that when you shoot something, some of them will just be riddled with the splinters and die from puncture wounds, and then anyone left alive but wounded will need to try and survive the poison.


I'm not saying my idea is comparable to wounding on a 4+ for power, but I think it's more realistic and more interesting! Just drop pointson Poisoned stuff if it's needed!

I think you are getting cognitively sidetracked by a model being Wounded, lost a Wound, as opposed to a model being wounded, the attack didn't do more than impact on armor.

A Poison rule that only affects models with multiple wounds and if they survive a unit attack down a wound is a very niche rule, even in the era of 2 Wound Astartes.

On the other hand, a rule that has Poison be more effective against models with lower Toughness is exactly what you would expect from a rule where just a scratch is enough to bring you down.

GW has managed to make Poison more effective the Tougher the target is, which is actually kinda weird. Any sort of venom or poison is more effective the smaller the creature it is used on. The amount of chocolate that will kill a chihuahua might not even give a Labrador retriever a stomach ache. Size matters!

 alextroy wrote:
I think you are getting cognitively sidetracked by a model being Wounded, lost a Wound, as opposed to a model being wounded, the attack didn't do more than impact on armor.

A Poison rule that only affects models with multiple wounds and if they survive a unit attack down a wound is a very niche rule, even in the era of 2 Wound Astartes.

On the other hand, a rule that has Poison be more effective against models with lower Toughness is exactly what you would expect from a rule where just a scratch is enough to bring you down.

GW has managed to make Poison more effective the Tougher the target is, which is actually kinda weird. Any sort of venom or poison is more effective the smaller the creature it is used on. The amount of chocolate that will kill a chihuahua might not even give a Labrador retriever a stomach ache. Size matters!

I'm thinking along the lines of a poisoned bullet.

If you shoot a human with a poisoned bullet, they will probably die from being shot, not from the poison.
If you shoot a horse with a poisoned bullet, they might die from the bullet, but will probably die from the poison.
If you shoot an elephant with a poisoned bullet, they will probably not die from the bullet, but could die from the poison.
If you shoot a whale with a poisoned bullet, they won't notice the bullet, but they might die from the poison.

These weapons aren't leaving scratches, they're actively trying to kill things, and then finishing off what they fail to kill with poison. The logical option would be double damage vs non-vehicles, but that's boring. Plus, if you get shot with multiple bullets, you die from being shot - it's the guy who only took one who cares that they're poisoned.

Similarly, large organic creatures should be brought low by poison. Perhaps instead have poisoning deal a nuber of additional wounds to a model, so it's not so binary - any model which survives being poisoned rolls 2d6 and subtracts their toughness, losing that many additional wounds. probably fatal to low toughness, possibly fatal to high toughness. Imagine facing nidzilla with poisoned weapons, you could end up wiping the floor with them!

 some bloke wrote:

 alextroy wrote:
I think you are getting cognitively sidetracked by a model being Wounded, lost a Wound, as opposed to a model being wounded, the attack didn't do more than impact on armor.

A Poison rule that only affects models with multiple wounds and if they survive a unit attack down a wound is a very niche rule, even in the era of 2 Wound Astartes.

On the other hand, a rule that has Poison be more effective against models with lower Toughness is exactly what you would expect from a rule where just a scratch is enough to bring you down.

GW has managed to make Poison more effective the Tougher the target is, which is actually kinda weird. Any sort of venom or poison is more effective the smaller the creature it is used on. The amount of chocolate that will kill a chihuahua might not even give a Labrador retriever a stomach ache. Size matters!

I'm thinking along the lines of a poisoned bullet.

If you shoot a human with a poisoned bullet, they will probably die from being shot, not from the poison.
If you shoot a horse with a poisoned bullet, they might die from the bullet, but will probably die from the poison.
If you shoot an elephant with a poisoned bullet, they will probably not die from the bullet, but could die from the poison.
If you shoot a whale with a poisoned bullet, they won't notice the bullet, but they might die from the poison.

These weapons aren't leaving scratches, they're actively trying to kill things, and then finishing off what they fail to kill with poison. The logical option would be double damage vs non-vehicles, but that's boring.

Yeah, I think this summarizes part of why poison feels off to me. Logically, a guardsman should probably be more scared of the splinters coming out of a splinter weapon than of the poison they carry, but that poison should technically be even more lethal to the guardsman than to a horse or whatever. (The dosage vs size thing.) So it's probably fine for poison to not matter against low-Toughness/low-Wounds models, but it feels weird because they're technically more susceptible to it than bigger targets.

Plus, the current rules for poison makes splinter weapons kind of underwhelming against low-Toughness targets (basically the equivalent of a lasgun vs T3), but then they also have a kind of niche advantage against higher Toughness non-vehicles. So you're glad to have the rule when you're facing custodes or tyranids, but you're basically fielding lasguns when you fight guardsmen. And then it gets a little extra weird because a lot of the higer Toughness non-vehicles out there are things like bikes, which is basically just a normal marine on top of a small vehicle or a gravis armor marine with extra inorganic armor strapped to his other armor. So poison is "bad" against inorganic targets like vehicles, but then half of its best targets only have a higher Toughness because they're inorganic...

So yeah. Poison just feels weird at the moment. But you're right about just giving poison extra Damage is kind of lame.

Plus, if you get shot with multiple bullets, you die from being shot - it's the guy who only took one who cares that they're poisoned.

Well, I don't know about that. A carnifex probably needs a higher dosage to be killed by poison than a termagaunt does. At least, to be killed quickly.

Similarly, large organic creatures should be brought low by poison. Perhaps instead have poisoning deal a nuber of additional wounds to a model, so it's not so binary - any model which survives being poisoned rolls 2d6 and subtracts their toughness, losing that many additional wounds. probably fatal to low toughness, possibly fatal to high toughness. Imagine facing nidzilla with poisoned weapons, you could end up wiping the floor with them!

Wiping the floor with nidzilla is actually a perfect example of why I'd be reluctant to implement that particular change. We want our opponents to have a good time too after all, right? I'd also worry about how long it would take to resolve all that. Maybe drukhari ought to be discussed separately form poison in general, but their base weapons are currently poisoned. So you could potentially be resolving this rule for every exposed unit in your army every turn. It's kind of giving me Soul Blaze flashbacks. Also, I feel like this could be a bit much against custodes/gravis marines.

IMO it should be a special rule applied to a normal weapon.

Poison (X): When rolling to wound with a weapon with this rule, the wound roll cannot be worse than X+ against non-vehicle/titanic units.

So a S4 splinter weapon wounds T3 on a 3+, but wounds T5+ on a 4+.

 Hellebore wrote:
IMO it should be a special rule applied to a normal weapon.

Poison (X): When rolling to wound with a weapon with this rule, the wound roll cannot be worse than X+ against non-vehicle/titanic units.

So a S4 splinter weapon wounds T3 on a 3+, but wounds T5+ on a 4+.

That seems like a reasonable way to do it, but does it feel weird to basically just give splinter weapons +1 to wound against T3 armies?

The most reasonable sounding option almost seems to be causing extra damage against flesh targets, but that just sounds so lacklustre.

Part of the problem is the way the attack sequence works vs logic, because:

Real life - first you have to hit them, then you have to get through the armour, then you have to wound them.

40k: First you have to hit them, then you have to wound them, then you have to get through the armour.


hmm...

What if you just dropped the amount of shots and make poisoned weapons auto-wound? mathematically it's the same if they have half the shots, thematically it makes sense because either the armour stops it or you get hurt by it.

Poison seems pretty good to me right now. The thing that holds it back is the non existent AP. As to the 4+ to wound effect, in my head it's because the Drukhari have dozens of different toxins and poisons to choose from. The shards are coated by different chemicals before being fired. The effect is that a Marine can be under the effect of a dissolving enzyme and a motor neuron inhibitor at the same time from multiple flesh wounds. Multiple debuffs ensures even tough gak gets knocked down like Monsters. If you ran with 1 poison it's possible to encounter something resistant to it's effects. Poisoned 2+ is the REALLY good stuff.

 Gibblets wrote:
Poison seems pretty good to me right now. The thing that holds it back is the non existent AP. As to the 4+ to wound effect, in my head it's because the Drukhari have dozens of different toxins and poisons to choose from. The shards are coated by different chemicals before being fired. The effect is that a Marine can be under the effect of a dissolving enzyme and a motor neuron inhibitor at the same time from multiple flesh wounds. Multiple debuffs ensures even tough gak gets knocked down like Monsters. If you ran with 1 poison it's possible to encounter something resistant to it's effects. Poisoned 2+ is the REALLY good stuff.

I have similar headcanon about the splinter weapons using a variety of poisons. Where it gets weird for me is that a volley of splinterfire that can overwhelm a marine's biology is only as good at wounding a marine as it is at wounding a guardsman. If the combined lethality of high-velocity metal shards, dissolving enzymes, and motor neuron inhibitors are sufficient to wound a superhuman space marine on a 4+, it seems like it should hurt a normal dude in a flakkjacket on better than a 4+.

I don't want poison to have 2-3 conditions, "if this, then this". Personally I'm very happy that I'm not wounding on 5+ vs higher toughness stuff. Before AoC nerf, Poisoned Tongue 3+ was really fun.

That's fair. I guess it just seems like poison should be doing something against all organic targets. Currently, it feels like poison doesn't do anything to T3 targets. Making poison just be higher Damage vs non-vehicles would feel like it didn't do anything against W1 targets.

But after reading through the responses in this thread, the current rules are probably fine. I think part of me is just missing the old rules where poison granted rerolls to-wound if your Strength was high enough. I don't want that exact rule back necessarily, but it did make poison feel useful against both low T and high T targets.