avatar in deathwatch Navee vs space marines

By Hardrainfalling, in Deathwatch Gamemasters

Posted at

Hardrainfalling said:

"Toxic is probably overly generous for their homebrew primitive poisons, but sure, we can splurge." really ? some of the most lethal neuro toxins in the world are from jungle frogs who knows where the Navii get their neuro toxin from? granted marines are pretty resistant to toxins anyway

Ewoks for the win !

just out of interest i can put an arrow through a car door with enough force to penetrate what evers soft and squishy on the other side with my mongolian hunting bow (a primiative traditionally made weapon) Longbows were replaced in war not because they arent powerful but a gun is easier and doesnt require an effective user to be trained from age 9 :)

True vietnam anolgies dont help but the history of jungle warfare and counterinsurgency does show armoured vehicles and air support isnt as effective

(btw i have a masters degree in strategic studies , my dissertation was on the phoenix program in vietnam so i am not just a kid whose watched full metal jacket too many times )

The Na'vi's toxin really isn't very dangerous compared to some synthetics, it takes around 1 minute to kill, as opposed to potentially a fraction of a second for modern lethal injections. javascript:void(0);/*1313785144238*/ Of course, the sort of thing that would actually hurt an Astarte is going to be more dangerous.

Bows vs guns. The bow stopped being used because it was a worse weapon. Any 5.56 round will go though a car door (or a whole car), but bows have nothing to compare to calibers like .50 BMG, or really anything big. Plus that fact that guns fire faster, and and aren't muscle powered. Pre 1860's things were a little different, but most anything newer is simply more dangerous then arrows.

How a Kill-team fighting Na'vi relates to jungle armored warfare and air support in the jungle is beyond me. Maybe if a whole chapter were to invade pandora it would make a bit more sense, but the US wasn't willing to drop tac-nukes everywhere, so there really isn't much of a historic precidence for that kind of fight.

More to the point, if I were going to run this sort of situation, I wouldn't make the Na'vi the main enemy. They aren't really all that dangerous, and frankly would need hordes to make a good fight, which is boring. Eldar corsairs puppeting them though, that could be cool.

Posted at

Hardrainfalling said:

just out of interest i can put an arrow through a car door with enough force to penetrate what evers soft and squishy on the other side with my mongolian hunting bow (a primiative traditionally made weapon) Longbows were replaced in war not because they arent powerful but a gun is easier and doesnt require an effective user to be trained from age 9 :)

To be fair, we could all manage that with a study kitchen knife, too!

Um...death within a fraction of a second from poison isn't in any way actually true. Humans only die of two things: Failure of the blood supply (due to leakage, failure of the delivery system (the heart) or failure to function (due to inhibitors in toxins for example)) or overwhelming damage to the central nervous system (headshot!). For a toxin that inhibits the blood's ability to absorb oxygen to take effect, it has to spread throughout the blood stream and affect at least half of the red blood in your body. That takes time.

For reference; those handy cyanide tablets they dole out to lucky people in order to avoid capture and torture take a couple of very painful minutes to work. The poison has to be ingested, then spread around your blood stream. I seem to remember that one of the NK agents/terrorists responsible for taking down an airliner in the 80s was saved after taking the pill and interrogated.

Poisons might prevent you from doing anything but rolling around in agony, but they take a while to kill.

Likewise, the idea that a lethal injection kills instantly and is a nice death is also a fiction. As I recall, an initial agent paralyses the victim, and then the toxin takes a couple of minutes to do its work. Time that is probably rather painful for the subject.