Yeah, that's right.

One of my players brought this up thinking I had some master plan in giving them a random find of some anti-plant grenades (roll on a random table on my part, actually) when they are fighting primarily Orks.

Then I started to think about it... they are largely fungal based lifeforms and anti-plant grenades are manufactured to annihilate any flora they are exposed to, including fungus.

While I am not going to make them Ork Serin gas, I am thinking of having Orks that are exposed to the gases lose their unnatural toughness trait.

What do you all think? For the sake of argument, let's say this idea has merit. I am asking for thoughts on how to negatively affect Orks exposed to the gas.

Fungi aren't technically flora. They're not plants, after all

Losing their UT seems like a pretty cool idea since it doesn't make them too weak (they still have True Grit) but does make it worth it.

Anti-Plant grenades have a damage value of what, 3d10? I would just use that personally. Why overcomplicate matters?

Which I found very weird because there's not even a guideline for how many wounds and what TB/AP a plant should have. I mean sure, a blade of grass has perhaps 1 wound (which is the minimum, right?). Give it TB/AP 0 and then it still takes 9dmg to reliably kill it. Which means that a flamer by RAW might take two rounds to kill a blade of grass. The anti-plant grenade might not work, either. On something with minimal staying power!

Which is why I'd only ever use them as narrative tools and in combat to eliminate plant-based vision impairment. A treetrunk, even if dead and defoliated will still provide cover, I think.

True, but I've had characters perform "grenade fu" in flak armour and come out unscathed. So that's more a fundamental problem of how grenades work, I think.

Yeah, but I find that anti-plant grenades are really begging to be used narratively and not with any sort of damage rating.
Therefore I prefer negating UT for a few rounds (DoF on a Toughness-20 test?), to 3d10 which may not really do anything noticeable anyway.

I was gonna say NO, since orks aren't just sentient fungus, but hideously tough genetically engineered xenos that are only based on fungi, but just nocking the UT off for a round or so would be ok i guess.

And I was going to say that for the sake of argument we are accepting that this idea is already flying.

Oh wait, I already said that.

Myrion - I am in agreement with you. The anti plant grenades would be strictly narrative; plants in a designated blast zone would simply slime away and vanish and this would include fungus, mushrooms, fungal forests, etc. Since fungi can be categorized as flora, this is not a problem to me.

Whether or not the Orks are sentient fungi is not being debated. But if the issue did get pushed in my game, which it is not, I would that since they don't really need to eat because their bodies can photosynthesize, then the fungi in their blood that allows that is susceptible to attack from a chemical agent that was designed to eradicate flora.

Loss of the UT is still the predominate leaning I am going towards. I could see it being a really valuable nerfing tool should they run into a group of rough and tough greens.

Anti-Plant grenades have a damage value of what, 3d10? I would just use that personally. Why overcomplicate matters?

To give my players a more in-depth experience rather than another means of dealing standard damage. Now the anti plant grenades have an actual tactical/strategic value rather than just existing as another grenade.

It is no skin off of my teeth to do so. I would imagine you can understand that more than anyone, since you go way out of your way to create community stats for a myriad of armies/races for Only War. It's the little things that count.

Very true sah and I salute the spirit of the idea. I just wanted to know if your decision was due to being mechanically uninformed or genuine flavour. Apologies for any offence caused.

My thinking is along the lines of Mr. Graves here - a temporary loss of UT is a nice effect that essentially serves like a gas-induced "toughness penalty" the Orks, or "bonus damage" for any attackers, and its short duration even keeps it in line with the effect this weapon had on the TT whilst making it not entirely useless, but highly circumstantial and thus not an obvious tool against them greenskins. Nice idea.

True, but I've had characters perform "grenade fu" in flak armour and come out unscathed. So that's more a fundamental problem of how grenades work, I think.

More a problem with how Toughness or the general injury mechanic works, I'd say.