If I cause any number of critical hits to a War Engine, do these criticals have a chance of causing more critical hits (and so on)? I am going to play as if they can't otherwise one very lucky hit could do huge amounts of damage.

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Umm, Hena I do not think it is quite as bad as that.
For Imperial Titans, each critical caused during the turn is diced for and can cause +1 point of damage on a 2 or 3. This is not cumulative (though a 1 will destroy the titan outright)

For Gargants, each fire that is burning can cause another fire to start. If a fire is not put out it also causes a point of damage. So assuming a single fire starts in turn #1, the worst case is that it grows to 2x fires in turn #2 and 4x fires in turn #3 etc. Damage also increases so eventually the Gargant will sucumb to the flames, but not for several turns.

Note that the chances of this actually happening are miniscule (unless you are using my dice of course )

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Sir Hemry Newbolt

Best one with that was in a fairly recent game I lost an entire baneblade company to a single hit, the first one going up caused a hit on the other two that also went critical, needless to say I was less then impressed with the dice (work out the odds on that).

I'm not sure I quite follow some of the examples.

I thought the question related to a critical hit causing a number of additional points of damage. Then for each additional point of damage caused you also roll for criticals meaning with really bad rolls you could get infinite damage (or at least until something dies)

Prevention for this is built into gargants and imperial titans with end phase rolling but will effect the Supa-Stompa, Eldar Titans and Tyranid Bio-Titans etc that have a critical effect that causes immediate addtional damage.

Ok, and with apologies for being dense, I now understand the point being made:-

When rolling for the effects of a critical hit in the end phase, this could call for an additional point of damage which could also go critical. If it does, you then check for the effect of this new critical which could result in further damage etc.

I think this 'catastrophic' cascade effect would only apply to certain IG and Chaos titans. Ork Gargants could start a new fire and suffer a point of damage for not putting the original fire out - and conceivably this could go critical also starting a new fire making a total of three fires, but that is as far as the cascade effect will go.

While I have never seen this played it does make sense. That said, the chances of this occuring are remote.

Refering to Marks example, the critical of the Baneblade WE is immediate destruction causing a hit on any unit within 5cm. It seems that the other two Baneblades were nearby, failed to save this new hit which then also went critical destroying these WE as well. Each WE has 1/24 chance of a hit penetrating and going critical. The chances of all three going up in this manner is thus 1/13824, or 0.0072% - - - - very remote but memorable if it happens (incidently it is more likely than winning the lottery)

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Sir Hemry Newbolt

Unless there is an exception noted, all damage can potentially cause a critical hit.  It is possible to create a chain reaction and blow something up.

I would say, however, that you only do one critical hit resolution roll in the end phase for a unit, rather than loop back indefinitely.  So, if that resolution causes damage, you would roll for critical hits, but you wouldn't immediately roll end-phase results for those additional criticals as well.  That unit has already resolved criticals, so going back and restarting would seem unfair to me.  I see that "re-start" as being similar to shooting AT fire, killing transports, then looping back to shoot AP fire at the dismounted troops.

So, for examples...

An imperial titan has a critical.  In the end phase the player rolls and the titan takes an additional point of damage.  That point of damage is rolled for critical and succeeds.  The titan now has 2 criticals.  However, reactor breach rolls have already been rolled for this end phase.  The player does not have to loop back to the beginning of the critical resolution and re-roll for the new critical.  No additional damage would accrue.  The two criticals would be rolled as normal in the following end phase.

A gargant takes a critical and has a fire.  In the end phase the player fails to put it out so the gargant takes a point of damage.  That point of damage results in another critical so the gargant has 2  fires.  However, the fire results have already been rolled for this end phase, so the new fire does roll for being spread or put out and it doesn't cause another point of damage until the following end phase.


Does that seem reasonable to you guys?

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Neal

Seems sensible to me.

Some Critical Hits can chain however, such as the Warhound Titan, as the Critical Hit Effects are immediate.

I've seen a Warhound hit, lose its first DC, stumble into a nearby building, doing a second point of damage to itself which was a second critical hit, and that second critical hit then had the Warhound stumble into a Baneblade, doing a DC of damage to the Baneblade and destroying the Warhound.

I was lucky the Baneblade didn't decide to explode too really.

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Right.  Immediate effects are always resolved immediately.  I was only referring to end phase effects being once per turn.

I've seen a Warhound hit, lose its first DC, stumble into a nearby building, doing a second point of damage to itself which was a second critical hit, and that second critical hit then had the Warhound stumble into a Baneblade, doing a DC of damage to the Baneblade and destroying the Warhound.

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Neal

Another example is the Hierophant Bio-Titan.

It takes a critical hit. You roll on the critical table and roll loses 1DC as a result. That new damage would be checked to see if it was critical and if it was you roll on the critcal table again. This could go on until you bleed the beast dry 1DC at a time if you keep rolling additional (immediate) damage on the critical table and that damage also goes critical.

Similarly the Hydraphant has a (1+D3)DC loss option on the critical table. If you got a critical and rolled that result then each point of damage would be checked to see if it was critical (2-4 rolls, with an additional critical for each 6 rolled).