Had my first little test game today, and combat got very bogged down. It was partly due to the flicking back and forth between rules (printing out all the critical effects and using them as GM screen information helped a lot though), but it was also due to someone decapitating an NPC with their sword and covering a circle with eight metres radius with slick blood.

The absurdity meant we ended up brainstorming what could have possibly resulted in such a mess, eventually settling on the idea that these particular Slaaneshi cultists were obsessed with drinking blood until they felt ready to throw up, also injecting it until they were doped up like an amoral Olympian, and... Yeah. We couldn't stop laughing. Their limousine was covered in blood from this one guy dying four or so metres away.

Mechanically speaking, it meant that the characters who actually did the killing were stuck there for a while, being both dazed and in difficult terrain, thus only able to move their AB every turn. I think reducing it to 1D5 metres would honestly be less absurd and debilitating for characters with low willpower or agility, while still creating that sort of "point effect" when a character is decapitated in a corridor or walkway.

A similar level of effect for the extreme effects of body and limb removal (although perhaps not body top level, since if you go out of your way to make a mess you might be able to do it).

Anyway, it did seem like a silly complaint, and making any pleas towards realism is not on when it comes to 40k.

I have considered this matter as follows:

1litre of blood equates to 1000cc ³

If we suppose a depth on the ground of 2mm, that gives us 5000cc ² of blood per litre once it has finished spreading out. That's approximately a 70x70cm square; though of course we're working with a radius, so that's only mentioned as a point of reference to aid visualization.

This is 40K and so your opponent is most probably a large and bulky person. Let us suppose 5 litres of blood. This would give us 25,000cc ² assuming total exsanguination (more on this shortly).

Area of a circle is calculated as π r ² as you know.So working backwards, we easily get

√(25,000 / π) = r

Therefore r = 90cm or just under a metre radius of blood assuming an even spread pattern.

Given that transfer of blood from inside body to outside body is highly unlikely to be total, our 0.9m radius is at best a theoretical maximum far short of what a decapitator could ever reasonably hope to achieve.

I would suggest that rather than drinking further blood, your Slaaneshi cultists had been imbibing Silver Nitrate which prevents coagulation and might afford a slightly thinner spread of blood over the terrain and thus a wider area and also achieve more of the "slick" quality you ascribe to the blood.

However, these are meagre changes compared to the lofty 8 metres radius aimed for.

My considered conclusion therefore is to join you in your doubts about the plausibility of this narrative effect.

On watching a decapitation however, one cannot help but notice the sporadic and violently varying directions of the blood's exodus from the body in the short time before the vital organ ceases to pump. This does not lend itself to an even spread - far from it. Therefore if the desire is to make believable the effects described, one could consider the blood not as a full circle, but as scattered patches of slippery blood within that region. This may cause the wound effect to be less risible to your group. Though despite what Messrs. Tarantino and Rodriguez like to portray, a 16m wide spread of blood seems unlikely to this correspondent.

Khadim.

Certainly, but there's also the mechanical effect of having a slow "bruiser" type character effectively immobilising himself. On the other hand, I shouldn't be using critical hit tables for mooks, but they're fun!

Your science is invalid.

Your science is invalid.

An elegant and succinct riposte to my post, and a riposte with a chainsword no less. I salute your victory..

Edit: from the comments on the YouTube page: "they cut through Tyrannids and orks like they were Rogal Dorn's butter." :D