Space Marine Durability

[XING06]

@Azathoth

I saw the plasma gun calc you did. Nice work on that. By the way a Leman Russ is 60 tons, 7.08m long, 4.86m in width, and 4.42 m in height according to codex 5 I think.

Again though what do you think about the durability downgrade, do you think this is just an inconsistency or just something to do with author misconceptions of how powerful a plasma weapon would have to be to do something like that?

 

[Azathoth_the_Abyssal_Idiot]

@XING

Do you mean the Conversion Beamer one?

I still think Terminators could somewhat scale to lower-end Plasma Weapons, but said weapons likely won't fully scale to a conversion beamer. Higher-end ones probably would, though.

Thanks for the Leman Russ stats, btw.

 

[XING06]

No problem. Give it a quick double check if you can though because the Leman Russ got a few physical changes after codex 5.

Yeah no, that was what I meant about that. No question that a conversion beamer would kill them easily. Right now though, Terminators and Centurions are all still way scaled too high. A plasma pistol is capable of killing them (Gaunt's Ghosts - I'm not sure which volume I'll try to borrow my friend's books). A gauss flayer is much much weaker than that and even then a barrage is capable of killing one.

Like I said though gauss flayer energy depends on whether we decide it as atomization or subatomic destruction. I still think its atomization due to the pretty consistent left over residue/vapor and the consistency with which they use atomize or various other verbs like that in the books and codex. Also, like I said the thing that really caught my attention is that in nearly all the books a good barrage from a basilsk artillery team can take out just about anything from a chaos marine squad to a lord of change. Anyway thats my two cents but we should probably wait for some more community input.

Also, I know we're not supposed to use game stats to scale, but interstingly a flayer has the exact same stats as a bolter, which goes anywhere from 9-A to 8-C. So that could be used as support., but probably shouldn't because of game balance.

 

[Azathoth_the_Abyssal_Idiot]

Yeah, I tend to shy away from using game stats, as they're definitely there for balance.

I don't want any average Joe who can pack Krak missiles being scaled to Kharn or something.

 

[XING06]

Yeah pretty much.

What we got to do is decide whether its atomization or subatomic destruction.

Or we could just put Terminators/Centurions at at least 8-B and possibly 7-B/A durability (I'm calcualting this based on how many shots make up a barrage - around 10-20)? Because again Warhammer 40K varies so wildly in power level so we should probably put in both low and high ends for more accuracy.

 

[XING06]

@ Azathoth

Again though what do you think about the massive inconsistency between the Basilisk AP and Plasma gun AP? A terminator can consistently tank a plasma gun shot which is definitely at least tier 7, but also consistently get killed by Earthshaker barrages. Do you think we should just ignore that because authors have no idea how powerful their weapons are and stick with the high end?

Also sorry for getting a bit too off topic with the flayers to determine Durability, I went into a bit too much detail as that's always been a bit of a pet peeve for me. The inconsistency just drives me nuts sometimes; its why I have a love hate relationship with 40K.