[40k 101] Feel No Pain

Feel No Pain is 40k’s version of reality TV. It can be annoying, frustrating, and hard to deal with at times. This ability was once mainly a nice perk of being a member of company Nurgle where every day is a sick day. Now with 5^th edition this ability is all over the table top. GW has decided this is the new drug craze and as your plastic crack dealer the first one is free.

Both Chaos books have this in Nurgle flavor for the most part, but sadly now with FNP all over the place the word plague before marine just
means Toughness 5 without a cool hungry dog to carry you into battle.  The Nids and IG both got a bit of the free FNP give away standard with a new codex upgrade. The DE get access to it with some irony since as pirates they have to steal/pillage a squad in battle to get it. Ork Nobs can qualify with a good medical plan and let us not leave out Marines. Really is there anything Marines don’t get? They are like rich frat boys separated into their cool little houses with old symbols and mascots who get all the cool toys.

My point is that understanding this rule is going to help you on the tabletop so let’s just review a few basics.

FNP more than anything protects you against weight of fire for most units. It can be negated though by anything that would prevent you from having an armor save or high AP weapons. To be negated by AP weapons they have to be AP1 or AP2. So that guy who tells you that his AP3 weapon negates your FNP because you wouldn’t normally get a save. (Every store seems to have this guy)This guy is confused, can’t read well, or is cheating. Please feel free to label your store’s guy in the correct manner.

Anything that doesn’t normally give you a save for example power weapons, power fists, power claws. Basically you should remember that FNP fears the word power or any weapon that glows. MC’s don’t care you have FNP they just pull you into smaller pieces, Dreads and Giant Robots of doom will still crush you until you make that cool splat sound they enjoy so much.  Also it’s important to remember that failed Dangerous terrain checks don’t get FNP only inv saves. If your assault marine messes up his landing so bad he takes a wound he’s probably not the best soldier to go into battle with anyway.

The last part that most people tend to forget or over look is that if the strength of the weapon is double your toughness you don’t get FNP. This in the past means that str 8 and 10 had even more value but most of these weapons normally are AP1 or AP2 already.  However with the DE now sporting this new must have fashion accessory Str 6 weapons have much more value when facing them and let’s face it few things are more family fun than burning wyches.