Following situation my Assassin was suprised by a frag grenade while wearing carapace armour (5 AP TB3) for 16 Damage (Pen0)

now he looses 8 wounds and is therefore heavily wounded (not in any way critically)

Now I had a discussion with my GM wether or not he lost blood and therefore he left a DNA sample on the scene or not.

I think not because:

Shrapnel from a frag grenade has a hard time going through armor (backed up by no pen) and therefore most of the damage should come from the blast wave which probably leads to bruises, internal organ damage, internal bleeding and the like.

Also even critical damage dosn't injure the hit until 3 points of crit damage, before it is just flash and noise which diorientates and fatigues.

His reasoning is:

it is heavily damaged so even if blood loss (which is only the term for bleeding to death and has nothing to do wether or not one looses blood) you loose blood

if it damages you it's gone through the armor

a bolter does explosive damage too and it will certainly rip open wounds if it hit's you

now the book does say your injury level determines how fast you heal but it says nothing about your state of being (unless you go into crit)

this is why I'm here (I ensured my GM we'ld play by what he says anyway but we continued the discussion)

What do you think?

• Does one loose blood everytime one is wounded?
• Does one loose blood if heavily wounded?
• Does one loose Blood only on critical effects that describe an open wound?
• Does it depend on the situation and if so what about the stated one?
• Is there any precedent in a rulebook?

edit:

I jsut found that the corebook also says you are a bloody mess when damage equals wounds (which probably tips it away from my initial point of view)

Atleast the GM is right, in any case.

My opinion is:

The shrapnels have penetrated your armor, you are heavy wounded and blood is very likely to be there. And if not, you lost a Hair with your DNA.^^

I say yes because if Tony Stark took shrapnel to the chest and he had body armor on, he still bleed out. And lets face it your no better then Tony Stark.

But seriously I would say that you would bleed but not bleed so much so your spilling liters of blood over the place but your may be still be bleeding though and could be dropping some blood on the ground. I'm going to say that you could be dropping drops or sprinkles of your blood, your cloths could be soaked in blood and such. It's really up to your GM, I mean if you can convice him then your win but if he decides against your protest then you lose this battle.

Now I'm wondering why does it matter?

And why is an Assassin rolling round with full Carapace armor?

The assassin is rolling around in full carapace armour because

1. it provides the best protection that he ca get at the moment
2. it doesn't harm his dicepools because it dosn't have 7 or more AP (I thin the threshold is 7 maybe it is 8)
3. since maximum situational modifiers are +/-30 the 30 move silently boni are capping possible boni so the +10 from synskin don't add anyway
4. synskin/hardened bodyglove IR invisibility still applies even when worn beneath other armour
5. the carapace armour has chameleon encoating on it

I may be wrong about some of the facts but that's how I have it in mind and how we play it untill someone finds out the rules are actually different.

Yes the GM is right that's what I stated in my first post, I accepted this and told my GM we go with his version but we still (after the game) discussed if I (my character) left a blood sample or not.

The Assassin escaped (not being made aware of the dna sample he left while being in a fully enclosed carapace armour) and now the question is if they track down who the intruder really was.

(I think about sleight of hands to give them a fake sample when they actually approach me to ask for a test sample which I could prepare with chem-use hopefully)

There is no RAW answer so this question is wholely about your opinion if someone happens to bleed dna samples onto the ground if heavily wounded.

So far that's a yes.

Frag(mentation) grenades shoot shrapnel all over, not a concussive blast or shockwave. Fo SHO you would be bleeding after eating one, armor or not. Even full carapace nearly always has many relatively unprotected areas around the plates and with shrapnel flying all over you would have minor cuts to go along with it with or without taking Wounds. Surely some of this would have splashed out. Even if it's concussive (and I'm sure there'd be some of that) you would almost certainly be coughing up massive amounts of bloody phlegm (sorry if you're eating lunch) and that is an uncontrollable reaction. Even if you got lucky and your armor and TB soaked the wounds, I would still think your kit would be in a sorry state and you would have cuts across unexposed areas. This IS A GRENADE!

I am also wondering why this matters, but I'm sure you wouldn't be asking otherwise. For some strange reason I've always felt that the level of forensic sciences for the solving of crimes is something very un-40K. Sure, they manipulate genes all over, but I dunno… Just seems weird to me. Or at least more of a culture-by-culture thing. On a relatively high tech world, no problem I guess.

the characters are on a moving ship like vessel, but the (probably evil) npcs have means (onboard) to sample dna (If the GM says so who am I to argue?)

It matters because I shouldn't have been where I ate the grenade in the first place and if they "proove" I have been there there's gonna be a weapons showdown right before we even arrive at the place were we should get informations while staying undercover and low profile.

A fully enclosed armor (with a built in rebreather for example the hax-orthlack mark II Magistratum ) is nowhere in the rules ruled to be not fully enclosed anymore if hit.

(in deathwatch there do exist rules about this concerning void leakage iirc)

since there are no rules we need to use common sense and let the gm call what actually happens

about the shrapnell if you are wearing a today modern ballistics west (kevlar) and are hit by a bullet or shrapnell (where covered by the kevlar) you will get blunt trauma but not suffer blood loss…

40.000 years in the future they are still using flak vests, but I am still thinking a fully enclosed air thight carapace armour shouldn't be vulnerable to shrapnell…

in generall I tended to think everything below critical is blunt Trauma but after all your replies it seems I am the one that thinks differently and need to adjust my mindset about wounds in DH

I'm not complaining just saying I thought differently, and I'm not complaining about the DNA stuff either although it's kinda hard to visualize this in the 40k universe I'm experiencing in the books I read. In the end I always have to accept what my GM rules.

I see where you're going with that. Part of it comes from my idea that carapace armor is more like the Imperial Guard stoormtrooper or the Arbites Enforcer variety, and is not fully enclosed but is a series of rigid plates that protect major organs and portions of the arms and legs. Most of these helmets don't cover the face, either.

If you're thinking of something a little more hardcore, as in a fully enclosed hard suit with a rebreather (like an unpowered version of full plate, which I've def seen in art and whatnot), I can see how you might think that the damage wouldn't be pushing through to cause blood loss, as it might potentially be contained within the suit. The kevlar argument is solid enough, and again if it's fully enclosed I would buy that to an extent, but not if it caused that much damage after armor reduction. I still agree with your GM, but I can see why you're saying that.

I think that kind of fully enclosed armor is pretty dang rare, and almost certainly is not what is meant according to regular rulebook artwork and descriptions of a "standard" carapace armor. What you're thinking of sounds more like Light Power Armor, similar to what the Adeptus Sororitas wear. Either way, fair enough and you're willing to listen to your GM so it's all good. I tend to leave it up to my players to describe to me what they imagine their weapons and armor to look like to hopefully avoid this kind of thing, but not everyone goes into that much detail.