WH40K Ork Boyz

[Onkl]

Hi guys

Could you please help me with a question regarding Warhammer 40k?

I'm trying to get an evaluation of the "combat strength" of an Ork Boy. My average "Line Infantry Space Marine" from your average chapter will have around 500 CP - since I have never played the tabletop all my experience comes from computer games. In those, the Battle Brothers usually slaughter masses of Ork Boyz, so should I consider them to be "fodder"?

How is that handled in the tabletop game?
Does an average Ork Boy have the ability to injure a Space Marine (or will his armor be too much to overcome?)?

I will use the "Fodder", "Worthy", "Boss" graduation to classify the opposition, wherein Fodder will be die a gruesome death should they receive 1 point of injury, Worthy will die when reaching 0 HP and Bosses fight with standard GURPS injury rules.

I've created this chart, but I think I made an average Ork too powerful?

[Aneirin]

Well, table top and fluff have a massive disparity.

In the table top an ork boy on the charge has a chance simply due to drowning the space marine in dice, but the marines armour and toughness will usually help him out. (don't have the exact stats, and I may be an editon too old, but when I played on the charge an ork boy had around a 33% chance of being killed and the space marine had around a 33% chance of dyeing. If the ork didn't get the charge though he would be at a massive disadvantage, something more like ork having a 50% chance of dyeing and the marine a 7% chance (statistics are rough estimates)

Fluff wise, orks are supposed to be hard. Think of gorillas that can wield weapons, and carry on going if your shoot them through the chest (and some particularly vicious ones will go on without a head!) But the fluff is inconsistent in their portrayal, and in all things, they will get stomped by any ork who doesn't have a name and is at least a nob, and even then they will die after a showy fight.

[hobbit_breath]

I don't think I'd have any orks that are less then worthy.

Well lets start with the Rogue trader stats and work from there.

All Orks start with speak ork, knowledge orks and intimidate.

'ard all orks have the traits unnatural toughness (Pretty much natural DR and a HT up) . iron jaw ( able to negate stun to some degree.)

true grit (reduced crit damage it takes.) and a bonus to all medical test to heal them.

Weapon skills and a extra attack.

"any ork weapon with the unreliable trait is not considered to be unreliable when used by a ork."

"All orks get a +10 will bonus for orks within 10m against fear and pinning"
probably about a +1 in gurps

klans(ork tribes) get bonus to skills mostly, one or two stat ups.

oddboys are skill templates.

[Maz]

Orks are extremely tough. Physically they can take much more than normal humans, almost as much as space marines really. Since "being hard to kill" is the defining characteristics of orks, they should definably be hard to kill and so be "worthy".
In Space Marine (the game) it's not even that easy to kil la single ork ,even with a bolter. Yes you can ill hrodes of them, but only if you play good and remember also in that game you are more like a 1000 pts super action hero with the best of the best equipment, not just "a normal marine".


A problem in GURPS though is that orks use normal steel weapons (choppas) and can still hurt Marines... where in GURPS there is no way anyone without ultra-tech power weapons could ever cut through the DR of a space marines even if you say the marines DR is "only" DR:75.
A good fix I've seen people use is to exploit the fluff about all orks being latent psykers and simply state that in the hands of orks, any melee weapon get an AD of (2), or even (3) or (5) depending on how strong you make them and how high DR you need them to be able to get through.

[Kage2020]

Originally Posted by Maz

A good fix I've seen people use is to exploit the fluff about all orks being latent psykers and simply state that in the hands of orks, any melee weapon get an AD of (2), or even (3) or (5) depending on how strong you make them and how high DR you need them to be able to get through.

I'm not a fan of this approach myself, but it is effective and can be tied into how "'ard" the Ork is. Hell, you could make the "'Ard" a power modifier and state up a whole bunch of Orky psyker abilities.

[Gold & Appel Inc]

Or, if you want to go RAW with it, let them buy the Penetrating Strike Imbuement with a Psi Power Mod.

[gilbertocarlos]

The 1/3 of the time that it hits could be modelled by gaps in armor(-8 to hit) or hitting in the head(Many spacemarines don't use helmets).
Or, it could be grappling and breaking limbs through the armor with locks.

[jeff_wilson]

Orks are a kind of planetary VD, they just grow around the crater (blister) where the infecting meteor fell, so perhaps the choppas are grown as well, so the divisor is due to their single-crystal edge. Remember, Orks' injury tolerance don't work against fire and 'splosives. It does against dakka, but ork dakka is inferior so a dakka fight is a losing proposition for orks vs just about anyone.

[fifiste]

Considering the rest of Ork Teknology the really sharp choppas (c'uz our Orkzy choppas chop best) seem quite alright to me. Maybe they just need to look wicked cool first to gain the bonus.

As for the general toughness I don't know the stats on table game but in the media there seems to be massively different fluff for it from fodder to nightmare. Lots of this could of course be explained what specific Ork's the what specific opposing side met.

For my own game I'd like them to be physically tough/capable to take more punishment than a Gorilla on PCP, but on the other hand not tooo capable (tech/tactics/marksmanship etc. wise) - I do think that as appropriate for the horde their main threat should be in numbers.

So I'd say the single Ork should be a threat from few(single) to several Guardsmen (depending from their own experience, equipment etc kasrkin to some random greenhorn just carted from their home planet), and a minor annoyance to a space marine (it's kind of hard to describe how elite those fellows actually are there's like a million of them in the world where the "standing" armies number in untold billions)

If you want more Orky threats then 1. numbers 2. you can match up with bigger, nobbier Orkz. They got they'r own elites and specials too - all kind of nobs, and weird-boyz all up to bad-ass Warbosses etc.
I just think a random choppa/shoota should be relatively small threat -- those seem to me more like ones that should square off in huge numbers with imperial guards (also in huge numbers of course), in messy WW movie style battlegrounds, not some duel/or spec op. etc. feeling.

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by Gold & Appel Inc

Or, if you want to go RAW with it, let them buy the Penetrating Strike Imbuement with a Psi Power Mod.

I agree, it's space fantasy anyway. Not sure about the psi mod* though because 'psi' in 40k means a connection to the warp and things that block the warp would block this power and I don't think that's canon, choppers still work against nid's etc.

*not because I don't think the ability is a one derived internally by the Ork (ala 'normal' psi), but because it doesn't seem susceptible to being blocked in the ways psi normally is. Although maybe you could make it psi but come up with a new power mod for the setting 'warp derived' (which would be a mix of a couple of the others) for the other stuff.

Originally Posted by jeff_wilson

Orks are a kind of planetary VD, they just grow around the crater (blister) where the infecting meteor fell, so perhaps the choppas are grown as well, so the divisor is due to their single-crystal edge. Remember, Orks' injury tolerance don't work against fire and 'splosives. It does against dakka, but ork dakka is inferior so a dakka fight is a losing proposition for orks vs just about anyone.

Where doesn't it work against explosives and fire?