Hi folks,

the topic says it all: I am astounded by the fact that rules do not attribute Plasma or Melta Weapons as "Felling". If superheated Plasma (or whatever the Melta uses to generate heat) is not good enough to do away with an Unnatural Toughness bonus... what else does?.

What is your opinon on this?

These weapons overcome Unnatural Toughness the old fashioned way - with a big base damage.

HappyDaze said:

..a ratio by which one had never ever needed to create the "Felling" Attribute to begin with: just increase damage output and everything is fine.

Felling weapons usually have said attribute to represent their ability to threaten space marines (and scary aliens) alongside humans, without being utterly capable of one-shooting humans through pure damage and penetration.

Plasma weapons are intentionally designed to say "Screw that, KILL IT!" to just about everything, and thus felling is somewhat unneeded since, well, unnatural toughness is just about the only thing that makes Space Marines more capable than humans of surviving one, which they're supposed to in this case.

Or, to put it more fluffy, Felling represents a weapon's ability to bypass natural resistance to damage through precision and unusual ammunition, which is why you find it exclusively on sniped styled weapons and the esoteric frozen shard blades. This is why the long-las has felling, while the Las Carbine doesn't, despite them doing the exact same amount of damage.

Yep, Felling is good for weapons which are supposed to damage tough monsters but are not extra-effective against normal beings or vehicles. Hellfire rounds would normally be a candidate for Felling.

Alex

So far as plasma goes I agree with the above statements. The weapons are designed generally speaking to cut through heavy armor of infantry style units if my understanding of the tabletop war game is correct, while melta weapons do much the same thing, though are very effective against vehicles. I think the Errata got it right with the double a melta weapons Pen at short range. It begins to make it feasible to take out some lighter vehicle armor units. (Most especially when attacking rear armor on say a Rhino. That being said I don't have rites of battle in front of me atm so I could be wrong.

Erm... just about everywhere in the tabletop fluff since forever, plasma weapons have been touted as marine killers. Melta less so since they hype up its use against armor - meaning vehicles, probably because its easier to sneak up on a tank than it is an astartes... I guess the high AP and DMG kinda cover this, but felling on one or both weapon types certainly wouldn't feel wrong to me.

CaptainStabby said:

vengence bolts are marine killers. well CSM killers. what do thousand sons shoot on table top they had some low ap bolter

CaptainStabby said:

Many weapons could be argued as "should be Felling", but it is not entirely an issue of logic, rather it should be viewed in terms of impact on the game as a whole.

The game designers have deliberately made Felling an uncommon trait because they render CSMs somewhat pointless. They in fact address this issue on page 275 of the Black Crusade book, specifically referring to the Felling Quality.