Mortal wounds…please explain.

[Rowland]

Guys I’m struggling to understand why mortal wounds are different to wounds.

My understanding of wounds is that they carry over to other models in a unit.  So if a Space marine captain is in melee with 6 termagaunts and he swings his sword which can potentially do 6 wounds, if they are all successful he uses one hit on one model with 5 remaining so the rest go to the others…all being wiped out.

Same with guns.

If a Terminator with a bolter has 2D6 and hits on both does he kill two 1wound models (termagaunts)

Then there’s the Terminator with a cannon which has devastating wounds which are mortal wounds…

 

this is the definition of mortal wounds: 

“Unlike damage inflicted by normal attacks, excess damage from mortal wounds is not lost if the damage can be allocated to another model. Instead, keep allocating damage to another model in the target unit until either all the damage has been allocated or the target unit

is destroyed.”

 

Am I getting normal wounding wrong?  Does the Captain going snicker-snack with his vorpal sword only ever kill one termagaunt each melee (for example)?

 

[Karhedron]

Not quite. To take you example of a Terminator Captain's sword does 2 Damage. This means that against a model with 2 or more Wounds, each failed save will inflict 2 Wounds. However against 1 Wound models, any excess does not carry over. The Captain has 6 attacks so if every attack Hits, Wounds, and a save is failed, then he will kill 6 Termagants. However he won't kill any more than 6. Even though the sword does 2 Damage, he cannot kill more than 1 Termagant per Hit (not per melee phase).

 

Now imagine the Captain has a rule causes his Sword to inflict Mortal Wounds. Again we shall assume that all his attacks Hit and Wound. The first thing that happens is that there is no saving throw since Mortal Wounds negate both Armour and Invulnerable saves (although Feel No Pain still applies). Now those wounds are allowed to carry over. The Captain has inflicted 6 wounding hits but since each one inflicts 2 Damage, there are a total of 12 Mortal Wounds. This means he can kill up to 12 Termagants if he is in combat with that many.

 

I hope that this clarifies.

Edited April 9 by Karhedron

[Rowland]

1 hour ago, Karhedron said:

Not quite. To take you example of a Terminator Captain's sword does 2 Damage. This means that against a model with 2 or more Wounds, each failed save will inflict 2 Wounds. However against 1 Wound models, any excess does not carry over. The Captain has 6 attacks so if every attack Hits, Wounds, and a save is failed, then he will kill 6 Termagants. However he won't kill any more than 6. Even though the sword does 2 Damage, he cannot kill more than 1 Termagant per Hit (not per melee phase).

 

Now imagine the Captain has a rule causes his Sword to inflict Mortal Wounds. Again we shall assume that all his attacks Hit and Wound. The first thing that happens is that there is no saving throw since Mortal Wounds negate both Armour and Invulnerable saves (although Feel No Pain still applies). Now those wounds are allowed to carry over. The Captain has inflicted 6 wounding hits but since each one inflicts 2 Damage, there are a total of 12 Mortal Wounds. This means he can kill up to 12 Termagants if he is in combat with that many.

 

I hope that this clarifies.

Yes it does, thanks Karhedron.

So to my brain attack now means number of “swishes” and with a gun, I imagine, it’s the number of rounds shot in that moment.  I previously assumed it was the “strength or power of that weapon” rather than a number of attacks.  Your explanation is great, especially clear.

I think what caused me the greatest confusion was multi-rolling rather than thinking of each dice as a separate attack.