I just wanted to ask a question about how to treat the flame quality when attacking a CSM wearing a Terminator armour.

The point is that according to the rules flame weapons don't need to damage a character in order to set him on fire. In this special case a character uses a Terminator armour with the osmotic gill life sustainer subsystem in order to be completly seperated from his environment.

My question is: If he is attacked and hit but not damaged due to the AP of the Terminator armour, is he still on fire and suffers 1d10 dmg and 1 level of fatigue every round, since he is unlikely to make the roll on Agility? Thanks in advance

How I'd do this is - obviously unless the flamer does hilarious damage it isn't going to breach the armour. On the other hand, it is going to set the armour itself on fire. How this then works is up to you. Actually, heavy flamers can easily do more than 14 damage…so basically, check the flamer's damage against the armour rating - if its higher, its gotten through to TB and he is on fire, if not then he isn't it's just his armour.

Thanks for sharing your opinion. Within our group of players we came to the same conclusion, so I just wanted to make sure if anyone else has different thoughts or so. The main problem is still the definition of the Flame quality since it states that "it doesn't need to damage the character".

if I recall correctly, it takes the machine trait for your armour to count against fire damage, barring any upgrades.
that 1d10 is only against his Toughness, then.

Of course, that does get a bit ridiculous when we're talking about fully enclosed power-armour with Ceramite and Insulated upgrades: at that point you really have to just give up, even though technically nothing's stopping the armour by RAW from letting the guy protected by it catch fire because of his agility roll. I mean come on…

I think armour protects from initial flamer damage, just not from the damage you receive by being on fire. I may be wong though.

no that's correct: fire's a specific thing that only happens after you "ignite" [could be from other things that invoke that rule, technically.

However, even if the weapon would only ever be able to do a point on Zealous Hatred, and fails to do so, you still catch fire on failed agility, even though your armour could be outright immune to a heavy flamer and its some Dark Heresy un-augmented hand-flamer that just hit you. At which point you start taking 1d10 [or more if its from the astartes version] whatever your armour may otherwise be immune to heat and flame.

Check out Hostile Acquisition's Augmetic Engine Plate; don't have it on hand this week; see if it protects the wearer from being set on fire as per the rule as well.

Nice to know that some other people have thought about this issue too.

@Kiton: I know the armour wouldn't protect the character after being set on fire. The point is, if the armour is good enough to prevent damage, which means the whole attack didn't even touch his TB, should he still be set ablaze which leads to 1d10 damage every round and 1 level of fatigue.

According to the rules: Yes. But wouldn't that mean that every heretic could just hit a Grey Knight with a Hand flamer and wait until he dies because he's simply unable to make the Agility Test (due to the Armour)?

Honestly though, a Chaos Space Marine will at most take 3 wounds from being on fire, and that's only if they assigned a sub 10 point roll to their toughness and haven't bought any advances. The normal for a CSM would be 1-2 which would happen 1 out of 5 rolls. So you could count on 1 damage every 5 rounds. I don't know about you guys but most of the combats that I've been in tend to not last even 5 rounds, and then it's perfectly reasonable to have your fellows put you out.

Even if the combat lasts past 5 rounds, the flame damage ticks up so slowly. CSMs have a minimum of 16 wounds. Let's say 3 wounds every 10 rounds. At that rate it would take 50 rounds to reduce their wounds to close to 0. Then 30-40 more to get them to critical death, and that's without the expenditure of any fate points. If they spent fate at -5 and healed for minimum, even a starting marine would last 130 rounds while on fire, unless the dice hated him and rolled 10s every single time.

And if the Marine has bought 2-4 Toughness advances? Fire doesn't touch him at that point.

The Fatigue is worse at that point and even then it takes a while before they pass out, and a fate point solves that issue quite thoroughly

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There is also the fatigue gain element in being on fire. And with that you can potentialy take on greater daemons as long as you can survive 20+ rounds.

As a houserule, I'd suggest the following:

A character in Power Armour will not automatically suffer damage from fire. The fire (assuming military-grade promethium or equivalents) instead burns out within 2d10 rounds. For the first four rounds, the armour protects against the fire with its full AP. Osmotic Gill Life Sustainers add four rounds to this, Insulated and Ceramite add another five each. Terminator armour, which was designed for use within life plasma reactors, doubles all durations.
After that point, the armour's heat sinks are overwhelmed and the fire starts cooking the wearer. Mmmmh…sauteed Chaos Space Marine…

As long as the armour still protects the character, there is no need for a WP test and no incurring of fatigue points. Additional fire attacks restart the 2d10 rounds (overlapping in duration), but not the armour's protection, which only "cools down" once the fire is extinguished.

I'd say base it directly off the armour.

Once on fire, environmentally sealed armours whose total protection is higher than the possible fire damage rolls against its full AP vs heat every turn: success indicates the fire has burned out.

While the protection is enough to avoid being damaged, this is of limited value: The armour will provide protection for a number of turns equal to your Toughness Bonus before getting hot enough to become part of the problem. Add one turn to the effective protection for each appropriate upgrade such as Insulation, Ceramite upgrades, life sustainers and the such.

This way it protects a while but even terminator armour is going to eventually sear you a little, and fire keeps a bit of the randomness about going out.

@Larkin: I see that a Space Marine doesn't have a problem with the damage itself. But as you mentioned the fatigue is far worse. Although you could reduce your fatigue level by infamy points it's simply a matter of time until you fall unconscious, if there is noone else who could put you out. For example: If you're the last one surviving or the group is separated. Also you shouldn't forget that a player could use this rule to set a Grey Knight terminator on fire and as soon as he gets too many levels of fatigue the fight is over. All you'd have to do is using defensive stance and wait.

Ok, let's explore the Grey Knight in Terminator Armor. We'll even use the exact stats from the book.

So you've managed to land a hit with a flame weapon on a Grey knight and his innate field hasn't ignored it completely (1 in >3 chance).

TB 8
WP 56
Wounds 25
Fate Points 2

As I've already talked about on average it's going to take a while to kill him outright. At 3 Wounds every ten rounds that's 90 rounds to get to Critical Damage, and they have True Grit, so 1 wound no matter what after that. So 2 wounds every 10 rounds, reset at -5 with a fate point so it's effectively 150 rounds before the Grey Knight Dies. So death from damage isn't feasible, and fatigue will happen much quicker.

Being on Fire has the wonderfull side effect of a Willpower roll each round, and Grey Knights have resistance heat, so honestly they have a 2 in 3 chance of succeeding each round. This drops back down to 56% (1 in >2) once a level of fatigue is recived)

Now on to the fatigue. The Grey Knight can take 8 Levels of Fatigue before passing out for 2 minutes. He has 2 fate points and won't be needing them for wounds as we can see above, so we can safely say the Grey Knight has 24 rounds to succed at an agility test with a 0 modifier. Painfull, unless they can find some water in which case I'd call the test a bonus of at least +10, probably +20, or automatic success if they just submerge themselves. But, for whatever reason you're fighting on top of a mountain, with no usable environment around. No walls to knock down and create dust, no sand to roll around in, no water nearby, no plantlife, just empty open space.

That's 16 rounds (failed willpower checks) of Storm bolter Shells firing at you with a 45% chance of success (35 after he's on fire (1 in >3). And you're not well enough geared to penetrate his armor so are having to pull some Fire schenanigans. Sure you're in defensive stance, but he's shooting you. Oh you can run, but it's likely he'll chase after you and HammerHand instead which is even worse.

So 6 hits with a storm Bolter on Semi auto. You've not invested in Meltas or Plasma weaponry, so you're likely in Carapace. Even Heavy Carapace. Your Toughness bonus is 4 or 5, let's go with 5. 6 hits is 12 hits, with Tearing and Storm, that's going to be 7 damage rolled per hit. Very unlikely he's going to jam. so 7+9 damage per hit (16) times 12 hits. You have AP 6, so you reduce damage by 7 each time you're hit.

How many wounds did you have again? More than 108?

Yo dawg, I don't think this is a scenario that would work.

@Larkin

Firstly, the AG test is not +0 but -20 due to the Terminator Armour or -30 due to the fatigue.

Secondly, you assume the point is to fight the whole thing out rather than land a single hit and get out of range/sight/whatever.
Alternatively, dying is perfectly alright, as long as it's not me personally dying. If I can trade a hundred underlings (preferably in small squads so they face off sequentially and don't get killed all at once) against a single Grey Knight, I win .

The Ag test is -20 base, the Termi armor gives -20, the Fatigue gives -10, which translates to +0 or -10.

Honestly, if it were my game and you tried to cheasily kill a Grey Knight like this, it wouldn't work. He'd have a squad with him, or be able to put himself out with the Environment fairly easily if you weren't there watching him the whole time, and therefore able to be put under fire the whole time.

I was mainly pointing the fact that you might as well just go for a Melta Gun and finish him off that way. IT would be easier, quicker and probably safer in the long run.

I think "putting yourself out with the environment" is exactly what the Agility test stands for. It's certainly not jumping away so quickly that the fire can't follow.

I was mainly pointing the fact that you might as well just go for a Melta Gun and finish him off that way. IT would be easier, quicker and probably safer in the long run.

I, on the other hand side, was pointing out that regular old fire might entirely suffice - and, contrary to the meltagun, be completely impossible to get rid of within the rules without some handwaving.

The Agility test represents the old "Stop Drop and Roll" method of self extinguish, which is why it's a Hard test. The first test is actually doable 1 in 5 for a Grey Knight btw, before he catches on fire to put himself out.

The other question that needs to be asked is, what exactly is burning while the armor is on fire? TBH, with the innate field that Termi armor has, I'd be rolling the field every round to extinguish the flames to represent the fact that there just is nothing to burn. In my mind, this would happen at the end of a round after damage and Fatigue for that round have been applied. A fresh application of fire would start the whole thing over again.

Flame throwers generally douse everything in a health layer of unburned fuel. They aren't "fuel efficient" in the conventional sense of the phrase.

Also, you should remember that, atleast in Deathwatch, when you take more damage through your amour than its AP, it stopped being environmentally sealed due to having holes.

Larkin said:

Great thing then that flame weapons can hit an entire squad with a single attack. Also a great thing that even un(ballistic)skilled morons can use a flamer just fine with the right Talent. Hopefully there aren't corrosives or toxins mixed in too (RT gives us the rules for these) or it becomes a spray and prey (spelling intentional) situation.

Just like to point out that if the test is Hard (-20) and the Grey Knight gets -20 agi for Terminator armour, they are rolling at a -40 or -50 if they suffer one fatigue level.

On average stats they're at a 10 or 0 after fatigue, or a 20 and 10 if they have 50ish agi.

As to putting it out with the environment, the gm gets to decide whether to make the the test easier or harder depending on where you are or if you have allies helping.