Melta trait and close combat

[Sump Thing]

Weapons with melta trait take target straight out of action when fired at short range. How does this work in close combat, like meltabombs and Ambot's tunneling claws? Does close combat count as firing at close range? RAW would say no, but tunneling claws are versatile and its short range is also its engaged range.

 

[UnderhiveGangstar]

I would say it isn't short range if in base to base contact, its just a close combat attack. If within the versatile range then the ambot would get the melta rule.

Melta bombs (all grenades) have a single range so really only have a short range, it would count in my opinion.

 

[Whiysper]

Melta only works at short range. If the weapon is short range 'E', I don't see any other way of reading that than 'melee is short range' - aka the Ambot murders you in melee.

 

[UnderhiveGangstar]

But the ambot doesn't actually have a ranged attack. I think its only a versatile attack with the 2" range. I believe the rulebook only used E when you are engaged in b2b contact. I could be wrong about that, and the new rule for versatile does say you are engaged at the versatile range, so melta will probably change to reflect this.

 

[Whiysper]

Ah, fair enough - I'm not considering the new rulebook, what with it not actually being released yet . If they've redefined Versatile to not be a ranged attack, and Melta to only work on ranged attacks, then it's unclear. For a change!

 

[Thorgor]

All we know it how Versatile has been changed. We don't know if they also changed Melta and/or the Tunneling Claw or Melta bomb profiles, so it's wait and see for the time being.

With the current pre-Compendium rules, the Tunneling Claw would have Melta work when Engaged (which is useless in most situations as a Serious Injury in close combat leads to a free Coup de Grâce anyway) and the Melta bomb Melta never doing anything (I would suggest as an house-rule to have Melta apply to Blast weapons if the target's base touches the center of the Blast marker, regardless of the distance between the shooter and the target).

 

[SPKnox]

In regards to the Melta trait being applied to CC attacks, if the attacks wounds and the armor save fails, the model is taken OOA and rolls on the Lasting Injury table. So for the Ambot's attacks being D2, each wounding attacks would be 2 rolls on the lasting injury table. Is this how others interpret the rules?

 

[Lachi]

I would it interpret in the same way.

 

[UncleFester]

Melta bombs (all grenades) have a single range so really only have a short range, it would count in my opinion.

I thought rulebook specifically said Grenades have no Short range, so all grenades are technically Long range. We've been playing that Melta trait on Melta Bombs is effectively irrelevant. Did that change somewhere?

Oh hell, the new rulebook probably changes that anyway...

 

[Thorgor]

Oh hell, the new rulebook probably changes that anyway...

The Tunneling Claw was changed (it's now a weapon with 2 profiles, a 'melee' profile and a 'ranged' profile, and only the 'ranged' profile has Melta (and a Short range of 4"))
The Melta bomb hasn't been changed and Melta still has no effect on it as far as I can tell.

 

[UnderhiveGangstar]

You are correct UncleFester, it does say that in the rulebook (in the new one, not sure about the old one, I don't have my copy to hand). Other than in this case, I haven't found an occasion when I would need to differentiate. The range isn't modifying the hit rolls etc, so the range is usually irrelevant.

The melta trait is different and really requires the grenades to have just a short range to work properly. I have never used melta weapons so this situation has never happened in my games so far. Do melta weapons burn a hole in the floor using that small template in the underhive box? If so, that could be the only benefit.

 

[Thorgor]

If a Short range attack from a weapon with this Trait reduces a fighter to 0 wounds, no Injury dice are rolled – instead, any Injury dice that would be rolled cause an automatic Out of Action result.

Grenades do not have a Short range

For a grenade, Melta should check the distance from the center of the blast, not the distance from the thrower. That's why I proposed this house-rule:

have Melta apply to Blast weapons if the target's base touches the center of the Blast marker, regardless of the distance between the shooter and the target

It should probably apply only to Grenades though, and not all Blast weapons, as the Multi-melta is deadly enough as is.
Speaking of which, what distance would you check for the Multi-melta? Distance between the shooter and the target point, distance between the shooter and the center of the blast marker, or distance between the shooter and the affected fighter?

 

[UncleFester]

In regards to the Melta trait being applied to CC attacks, if the attacks wounds and the armor save fails, the model is taken OOA and rolls on the Lasting Injury table. So for the Ambot's attacks being D2, each wounding attacks would be 2 rolls on the lasting injury table. Is this how others interpret the rules?

We play that if the fighter is OOA, he gets 1 roll on the Lasting Injuries table, regardless of the Damage stat of the weapon that took him out.

There are a lot of weapons that have Damage greater than 1. For example, Heavy Bolter is Damage 2 with Rapid Fire(2). If you rolled 6 hits on the Firepower dice, you could be doing 6 Wounds, or 12 Damage. Does that mean 12 rolls on the Last Injuries table?

 

[Thorgor]

We play that if the fighter is OOA, he gets 1 roll on the Lasting Injuries table, regardless of the Damage stat of the weapon that took him out.

There are a lot of weapons that have Damage greater than 1. For example, Heavy Bolter is Damage 2 with Rapid Fire(2). If you rolled 6 hits on the Firepower dice, you could be doing 6 Wounds, or 12 Damage. Does that mean 12 rolls on the Last Injuries table?

My understanding is that hits are resolved sequentially. If one hit takes a fighter Out of action, other hits allocated to that fighter should be discarded as they are no longer on the battlefield.

When a fighter is taken OoA, you roll once on the Lasting injury table for each OoA result (or Flesh wound result, if the fighter has been reduced to T1) from the Injury roll that took the fighter OoA. That means a D2 attack may result into 2 Lasting injury rolls, provided the target only has 1 or 0 Wound left and two OoA results are rolled.

Melta means that any Injury dice you would roll at short range is replaced with an automatic OoA result. If you would roll 2 dice for an Injury roll with a Melta weapon at short range (if the weapon is D2 and the target has 1 are 0 Wounds left for instance) then you get two OoA results and the target rolls twice on the Lasting injury table.

 

[UncleFester]

When a fighter is taken OoA, you roll once on the Lasting injury table for each OoA result (or Flesh wound result, if the fighter has been reduced to T1) from the Injury roll that took the fighter OoA. That means a D2 attack may result into 2 Lasting injury rolls, provided the target only has 1 or 0 Wound left and two OoA results are rolled.

Ah, yes. I see what you are saying. We house-ruled that because we were accumulating Lasting Injuries faster than we were getting Advancements. It becomes advantageous to retire the fighter after a couple Injuries and just hire a healthy replacement because you get a boat-load of credits, but a piddling amount of XP. That kind of stinks from a campaign perspective.

 

[UnderhiveGangstar]

"My understanding is that hits are resolved sequentially. If one hit takes a fighter Out of action, other hits allocated to that fighter should be discarded as they are no longer on the battlefield."

Are you sure this is right Thorgor? I thought you resolved all rolls on a single target at the same time. The lasting injury table says that if an injury causes more than one OOA result, multiple rolls are made on the table.

I cant find any reference to discarding additional hits, do you know where I can find this?

 

[Thorgor]

@UnderhiveGangstar :
Honestly, it's very fuzzy. That's just the way I interpret the rules (probably influenced by how it works in Kill Team), but I wouldn't mind a clarification.

The rules for Lasting injury (p87) read "If an Injury roll results in more than one Out of Action result, a separate roll for each is made on the Lasting Injuries table and each result is applied". So you need a single Injury roll to result into multiple OoA results for this to apply.

The rules for Injury dice (p71) read "Out of action: The fighter is immediately removed from play". So, if an Injury roll takes a fighter out of action, there is no need to make any more Injury rolls for that fighter as they don't exist anymore.

My understanding is that you make one Injury roll per (wounding, unsaved) hit, and not one big Injury roll per attack. After all, each hit leads to a separate Wound roll and a separate Armour save roll, so there is no reason Injury rolls should work differently.
However, I'll retract my previous statement that hits are resolved sequentially. If it were the case, then Flesh wound from the first hit would change the Wound roll for the second hit, and I don't think it's how it's supposed to work.

 

[UnderhiveGangstar]

A single injury roll cant result in multiple OOA results though, the injury roll is on the injury dice which can only ever give you one result at a time. You roll all hits at once, all wounds at once, all save, therefore all damage on the injury dice. You could play the game with a single D6 otherwise.

"The rules for Injury dice (p71) read "Out of action: The fighter is immediately removed from play".

Those rules don't make any reference to rolling sequentially, it doesn't make sense to roll these dice one at a time, when no other rolls are done that way. It wouldn't matter if you rolled one dice or five, that quote would still be applicable. You would have multiple lasting injury results on the table and the fighter would be removed.

From P71 of the new book, "When any number of Injury dice are rolled against a fighter for any reason, apply the result of eace individual dice as follows..."

That indicates that the result of all the injury dice are used.

 

[Thorgor]

If the weapon as a Damage value of 2 or more, then you may end up rolling several Injury dice for a single Injury roll.

Also, check the True grit skill (p187):

When making an Injury roll for this fighter, roll one less Injury dice (for example, a Damage 2 weapon would roll one dice). Against attacks with a Damage 1, roll two dice — the player controlling the fighter with True Grit can then choose one dice to discard before the effects of the other are resolved

It's pretty clear that you make a separate Injury roll for each hit. True grit wouldn't work otherwise.

 

[UnderhiveGangstar]

I'm not sure you are interpreting what I'm am describing correctly. True grit would work, you can even roll multiple injury dice in a true grit roll. You simply add one more dice, then discard one of them. You then resolve the effects of the other hits as described. That indicates that you resolve all the dice, you don't discard the rest when you roll an OOA.

I believe what you are saying is that if you make two damage 2 attacks that both wound, you would roll one wound's 2 damage, then discard the second wounds 2 damage if the first take them OOA, is that correct? I just cant find anything to support that view, you resolve the hit rolls together and the wound rolls together, why not the damage?

The resolve hits page even specifies that if there are additional damage caused after the last wound is removed, roll an injury dice for each and apply the result.