I was running my campaign yesterday and there where some problems regarding the "Damaging a Horde" rules. Perhaps I am reading this wrong but the following paragraph is rather confusing, to say the least:

Sooooo, which one is it?

(The editor messed up the post)

ygg said:

I was running my campaign yesterday and there where some problems regarding the "Damaging a Horde" rules. Perhaps I am reading this wrong but the following paragraph is rather confusing, to say the least:

• Each hit that causes any amount of damage reduces a Horde’s Magnitude by one . Therefore, an attack that, after accounting for armour and Toughness Bonus, causes 15 points of damage reduces the Horde’s Magnitude by 1 .

Sooooo, which one is it?

Let's say your Battle-Brother is firing his Bolter (1d10+9 X, Pen 4) (Living Errata version) into a Horde of Orks. The Orks have TB 8 and AP 8. Your Battle-Brother scores 3 hits with the Bolter, and due to the special rules for Hordes he gains an additional hit for using a weapon with Explosive damage: A total of 4 hits. You proceed to roll damage for the following totals:

16, 13, 27 (with Righteous Fury) and 10

The Orks (when accounting for Pen) can absorb 12 points of damage. This means that only three of the hits cause any damage:

4, 1 and 15.

The actual damage caused isn't important. Each of these hits count for reducing the Horde's magnitude by 1 point each.

-K

kjakan said:

ygg said:

I was running my campaign yesterday and there where some problems regarding the "Damaging a Horde" rules. Perhaps I am reading this wrong but the following paragraph is rather confusing, to say the least:

• Each hit that causes any amount of damage reduces a Horde’s Magnitude by one . Therefore, an attack that, after accounting for armour and Toughness Bonus, causes 15 points of damage reduces the Horde’s Magnitude by 1 .

Sooooo, which one is it?

Let's say your Battle-Brother is firing his Bolter (1d10+9 X, Pen 4) (Living Errata version) into a Horde of Orks. The Orks have TB 8 and AP 8. Your Battle-Brother scores 3 hits with the Bolter, and due to the special rules for Hordes he gains an additional hit for using a weapon with Explosive damage: A total of 4 hits. You proceed to roll damage for the following totals:

16, 13, 27 (with Righteous Fury) and 10

The Orks (when accounting for Pen) can absorb 12 points of damage. This means that only three of the hits cause any damage:

4, 1 and 15.

The actual damage caused isn't important. Each of these hits count for reducing the Horde's magnitude by 1 point each.

-K

This. Damage only matters in that only shots that damage can reduce a Horde's magnitude. If the damage is less than the total soak of the Horde, then no Mag is lost. And no matter how much damage is caused, be it 100 over soak or only 1 over, the horde only loses 1 Mag for that hit.

Thank you for clarifying, we've been using it correctly then. I was surprised to find that the paragraph was not errata-ed.

Cheers!

ygg said:

To avoid generating further confusion, the paragraph does not need errata. The paragraph does not in any way indicate a horde does, might, or should take more than 1 type of damage. That damage being to its magnitude rating, only if the attack would have caused a character in the horde to loose wounds (any amount) from the attack.

If any attack deals more damage then armor and toughness a character in a horde can mitigate the attack deals 1 magnitude damage.

The attack could do 1 point of damage after armour/TB or 92 points of damage after armour/TB, either way the horde suffers only 1 point of magnitude damage from the attack.

Rule of thumb: weapons with high rates of fire or which generate multiple hits are better against hordes than a powerful single shot weapon.