I've seen threads regarding the effectiveness of field saves as they pertain to Hordes. I hadn't given the topic much thought, but this just popped into my head (and I admit it's quite silly)…

What if a Kill-Team were assigned to a Strike Cruiser and were to take the battle into the heart of the Acheros Salient to cause as much damage to the Stigmartus fleets as possible, and four of the Team's members Requisitioned Storm Shields…and mounted them on the four hull facings of the Strike Cruiser?

Silly, I know. But what if?

Nothing will happend.

A cruiser is kilometers long and wide and storm shield won't even protect 1% of the frontal hull.

Lokk at the lance weapon it cover a 500m radius aera… so as long i'm concern you will burn 4 stormshield…

Macrocanon will cover kilometers wide aera with explosive so quite the same as the lance…

The naval torpedo will aslo make that much damage…

Your idea is like putting a 1cm² piece of metal on your heart and go running naked in a mine field, pretty useless.

Like a kevlar vest protecting you from a direct shot from a 120mm canon, not a chance.

By that logic, one Field save is no good to a Horde. Yet threads on THAT topic seem to offer a different opinion. Like I said, it is a silly thought, but RAW suggest it will work. Field saves protect against attacks, it does not specify a limit to the size of the attack. So I guess what I'm looking for is an answer: Are there limits to the width/depth/breadth of attacks Fields can protect against, or do they simply protect from each attack regardless of the AoE? You know, 'cause a Blast (6) weapon hitting an Astartes could be construed as something a Storm Shield wouldn't protect against…hits the Marine behind the guy with the Storm Shield, obviously not coming from a protected direction, so no Field save. Actually, it wouldn't protect the Marine: Field saves protect against Attacks, not hits. The Marine behind Stormy was attacked, Stormy just happens to be hit by the same attack. Completely different.

If a voidship could get better protection from a stormshield than say, it's own void shields, why wouldn't every space marine vessel be equipped with one on the front?

The answer is that the storm shield will not give better protection, except perhaps for a tiny fraction of the ship's hull. As for the idea of fields protecting hordes, there is obviously an upscaled field to do just that. One stormshield will not protect a horde.

As far as the Storm Shield on a Strike Cruiser goes, it's quite obvious no sane GM would allow the shenanigans.

Still, I have raised a valid point. Fields protect vs attacks , not hits. Bad guy shoots at Marine 1 with a Blast(X) weapon, and Marine 2 just happens to be in the Blast AoE, but is not the target of the attack. If Marine 2 had a Field it would not protect him from the hit as he wasn't attacked. This of course is following the rules by the letter rather than the intent, but hey, if you've got players that are meta gaming then the GM can do it, too.

You miss one key point in that argument. The field rules on p166 of the core book specifically state that even attack "nullified" by the field can affect others caught in the blast radius. The attack is nullified for the wearer of the field and no-one else.

I'll try this again…

Marine 1 is not wearing a SS, and is attacked with a Blast (X) weapon. Marine 2 is wearing a SS, and is within the AoE of the attack, so even though he is not the target he is hit. Marine 2's SS does not nullify the hit as it only nullifies attacks.

Alekzanter said:

An Attack must Hit before a Field can protect the user. Don't try to over think things too much. The field would still activate.

Yeah their may be a single attack roll made by the attacker but the effects of the attack 'hit' everyone in the radius, thus each target gets a chance to dodge/parry/field save/psychic power etc as they see fit.

As for the starship idea - ridiculous and you know it.

Alekzanter said:

If that was a viable tactic, then Stigmartus too would have strapped Storm Shields onto his cruisers.

However, it's not really an issue of wether it would work or not. Before the GM wuld even have to take this into consideration, the players would have to step completely out of character and assume that the 40k universe works on some sort of video-game logic where one can achieve exploits by applying the non-applicable.

-K

Kasatka said:

Couldn't agree more.