I think the confusion mainly stems from the logic inherent - one boltgun shell does two damage. So two shells should inflict four, should they not?
Horde Damage:
With blast(2), don't metal storm rounds cause 2 mag damage base per hit with damage that exceeds? Followed by 1d5 on devs with unrelenting.
So a perfect hit from a HB = 10*2 (for blast) + 1 (for x damage) + 1d5 (for unrelenting dev) = 21 + 1d5
Add to that all the other crazy talents/other stuff as you see fit.
As far as I can remember, yes, that's how it works out.
On the logic problem: I see the extra hit largely being due to the extra psychological damage explosions would cause, which wouldn't directly scale with every hit. Bolt shells (for one) don't generate fragments (metal storm rounds aside), so they are certainly not doing more damage that way. However seeing your mate getting a chunk blown out of him, will weaken their resolve but isn't as important effect as people actually getting killed.
Cifer said:
The Devastator rules as long as the battlefield is one endless flat plane of land - there's a reason 40k TT battlefields should be at least half full of terrain pieces.
The Devastator rules for as long as his ammo lasts. And their guns don't jam.
Devastators are supposed to be...devastating. But there are caveats, don't worry about them ruining your day too much.
Cuagau said:
The Devastator rules for as long as his ammo lasts. And their guns don't jam.
That's what I save my fate points for
Oh, just charge the Devastators, get them into close combat, that just about makes them no better than any marine save the Assault Marine...
Charmander said:
MILLANDSON said:
Yep, they can carry out dodges and parries. Given that many of the Tyranids have the Dodge skill trained, it'd be silly to not allow them to use it.
At first glance this seems totally bizzare to allow a seething mass of Tyranids to all jump out of the way of your bolter fire, though with autofire it works a little better (with DoS eliminating hits, not dodging 100%), but for flamers and blast weapons, how would that work? You spout a 30m long, something like 19m wide cone of fire at a undulating mass of enemies, and they all just move to the side to avoid being hit? Or you chuck a grenade in the middle of them and they all scatter out of the way? It seems like with a dodge of that varitey they could take half damage or something, but removing the damage entirely seems odd to me.
Don't forget that a Horde has a Size modifier. A M30 Horde is Massive (+30) and Hormagaunts, for example, only have Dodge +10, so you'll still get an extra 2 hits. Just apply the Size modifier as a penalty on the Ag test to avoid the flamer. Sure some will dodge out of the way, but bear in mind that members of a Horde aren't all wandering along the road. They'll be taking cover, running through alleys, bouncing off walls or flying at various heights, depending on what they are.
So how many hits can a horde dodge?
If they are going to take 30+ hits from a single marine, then do they only get to dodge a total of 1 hit? (or 2 if they have step aside, or 3 if they also have wall of steel and it is a melee attack)
Also do they get to avoid hits from a flamer with the agility roll, and then on top of that dodge afterwards any hits remaining?
Should all this be an all or nothing type thing?
After writing all that it seems it should be resolved like it was 1 on 1 (which is kind of the point of hordes).
So a devastator marine getting 7 degrees of success with a heavy bolter on a horde, resulting in 8 rounds hitting. The horde then rolls dodge and gets 3 degrees of success. This results in the devastator getting 4 successful bolter rounds into the horde, which he then figures out the magnitude damage for, including doubling those 4 hits to 8 for Unrelenting Devastation, etc.
Also to complicate things, say an assault marine does multiple attack on a horde and gets 3 degrees on success, 2 degrees of success and 4 degrees of success on a horde that only has the dodge skill. The horde would then try to dodge one of the attacks, say the 3 degrees of success since that was first, and gets a successful dodge with 1 degree of success. That would effectively reduce that 3 degrees of success attack to 1 degree of success. Then the assault figures out hits and damage with the 1, 2, and 4 degrees success results.
The agility roll for hordes to avoid a flamer would be the same, so a heavy flamer doing 11 hits on a horde would be reduced by 3 hits if the horde succeeded by 2 degrees of success on their agility roll. If they had dodge then they would get to further reduce the hits based on how many successes they got with that roll.
Is this basically a RAW/RAI way it should work?