Hey, everyone. When using Space Marines in your game for any reason, what stat block do you use? Does Rogue Trader have an official one or do you simply nerf Deathwatch Astartes stats?

Thanks.

There are Chaos Space Marine statlines in both Deathwatch and Rogue Trader that are "balanced" for the systems. Now when depicting Space Marines on the loyalist side I tend to take those same statlines as they are and add more gear to the marines themselves.

Armor Upgrades (especially the bonus armor against energy and impact), Weapon Upgrades (Motion Predictors on all their weapons for example), as well as the classic weapons associated with them.

An important note for Astartes of course is that they never engage in combat on anything but their own terms, they will rarely adhere to a battle-plan set out by the PCs unless they have direct authority over them (which would need some explanation as to how). Also they are equipped to handle any combat situation, a squad of Astartes always have a dedicated anti-armor weapon either in melee or ranged form, a support weapon be it long-ranged or short depending on engagement and an assortment of grenades from smoke to meltas.

In addition to this they will use tactics that emphasise their strengths while mitigating weaknesses, they will look to operate as a cohesive group and not as individuals (depending on the Chapter this may change but most Codex Chapters follow this principle) and WILL retreat if facing an enemy they are not fully prepared for.

Yeah, I think I would pull the stats for CSMs out of Fallen Suns, p.61, and "trim off" any of the little Chaos flags, from their stats. Barring that, since I don't remember seeing their stats in the rest of the line, maybe grab them from Deathwatch, and accept that they will, combat-wise, be that much better than you players probably will be; they're Space Marines, it might even be appropriate. If you happen to be a fan of RT's field/Massive Battles rules, they also get special rules for use in that theater, in Battlefleet Koronus, p.124. If you use Astartes in this way, they don't need the full stat line. If you actually plan to have them act out combat, alongside the party, Fallen Suns, or DW, and remove the spikes, is probably the best bet. Regular Space Marines can be a challenge to find a block for, as many books in this series seem to like to skip out on a general stat block for whatever the players will play as, I assume to prevent the players from feeling compelled to follow it. Thus, Deathwatch often seems uninterested in giving Astartes stats, with you being those Astartes, only giving Chaos variants, and with each type of Marine being a different Specialty, and on...the other lines often also do this; Only War giving stats for typical Guardsmen was actually a small surprise, to me. As for RT, they shy away from Space Marines, because they claim there aren't many active in the Expanse; this keeps them from overshadowing your "mere mortals", and fellow Rogue Traders, while occasionally statted, tend to be entirely unoptimized, and make a whole party of twinkers, optimizers, if you wish it to sound less judgmental, cringe at how unchallenging they'll be. Okay, I've babbled enough. The RT line is light on Astartes stats, so either Fallen Suns, the CSMs, and remove the spikes, or grab Deathwatch, and take their CSM, and remove the spikes. Only War can do this, but they start to have the very different mechanics, in some places, so that might be even more work.

Also remember, while they might be temporary guests aboard your ship, while there, and ready for battle, they might involve themselves more than you expect. They won't drift among your crew, I imagine, but they'll probably expect to be involved in any tactical planning exercises, just so they can plan their actions around, or in concordance, with such efforts. As was said, you probably won't be in a good position to tell them what to do, but they'll certainly look into what you are planning to do, to adapt accordingly. If you are on particularly good terms, and they are NOT Dark Angels, they might even tell you some of what they'll be doing, so you can plan around, and benefit from their formidable skills. Depending on what brings them there, remember to play up the honor-bond that might have them helping you, or that there is an Inquisitor watching, from the sidelines (even if distantly), as that is often the other way you get Astartes. Hope this helps even remotely, and have fun with it.

There are Chaos Space Marine statlines in both Deathwatch and Rogue Trader that are "balanced" for the systems. Now when depicting Space Marines on the loyalist side I tend to take those same statlines as they are and add more gear to the marines themselves.

Armor Upgrades (especially the bonus armor against energy and impact), Weapon Upgrades (Motion Predictors on all their weapons for example), as well as the classic weapons associated with them.

I am hesitant to use the Deathwatch stats as the are obviously geared to be much more powerful than the other systems. Which "balanced" statlines are you referring to? Page numbers would be a big help.

I simply need more balanced stats. I have been playing games in the 40k universe for some time and have a good grasp on how Astartes operate. But good looking out.

Yeah, I think I would pull the stats for CSMs out of Fallen Suns, p.61, and "trim off" any of the little Chaos flags, from their stats. Barring that, since I don't remember seeing their stats in the rest of the line, maybe grab them from Deathwatch, and accept that they will, combat-wise, be that much better than you players probably will be; they're Space Marines, it might even be appropriate. If you happen to be a fan of RT's field/Massive Battles rules, they also get special rules for use in that theater, in Battlefleet Koronus, p.124. If you use Astartes in this way, they don't need the full stat line. If you actually plan to have them act out combat, alongside the party, Fallen Suns, or DW, and remove the spikes, is probably the best bet. Regular Space Marines can be a challenge to find a block for, as many books in this series seem to like to skip out on a general stat block for whatever the players will play as, I assume to prevent the players from feeling compelled to follow it. Thus, Deathwatch often seems uninterested in giving Astartes stats, with you being those Astartes, only giving Chaos variants, and with each type of Marine being a different Specialty, and on...the other lines often also do this; Only War giving stats for typical Guardsmen was actually a small surprise, to me. As for RT, they shy away from Space Marines, because they claim there aren't many active in the Expanse; this keeps them from overshadowing your "mere mortals", and fellow Rogue Traders, while occasionally statted, tend to be entirely unoptimized, and make a whole party of twinkers, optimizers, if you wish it to sound less judgmental, cringe at how unchallenging they'll be. Okay, I've babbled enough. The RT line is light on Astartes stats, so either Fallen Suns, the CSMs, and remove the spikes, or grab Deathwatch, and take their CSM, and remove the spikes. Only War can do this, but they start to have the very different mechanics, in some places, so that might be even more work.

Also remember, while they might be temporary guests aboard your ship, while there, and ready for battle, they might involve themselves more than you expect. They won't drift among your crew, I imagine, but they'll probably expect to be involved in any tactical planning exercises, just so they can plan their actions around, or in concordance, with such efforts. As was said, you probably won't be in a good position to tell them what to do, but they'll certainly look into what you are planning to do, to adapt accordingly. If you are on particularly good terms, and they are NOT Dark Angels, they might even tell you some of what they'll be doing, so you can plan around, and benefit from their formidable skills. Depending on what brings them there, remember to play up the honor-bond that might have them helping you, or that there is an Inquisitor watching, from the sidelines (even if distantly), as that is often the other way you get Astartes. Hope this helps even remotely, and have fun with it.

Thanks, Venk. I will check out Fallen Suns. I would rather nerf something from Deathwatch than build up from a Guardsmen.

There's no need for concern about how they will fit into my game. This is for my Tau game. I wanted to stat the Astartes as potential elite or master level enemies for the PCs to face and I wanted something as close to the game from which they were made to do so. I am also using DH2/OW/BC combat rules, so I will already have to do some tweaking for things like unnatural stats and the like. Not really an issue, but if I had a solid stat to go on it would make my life easier.

Again, thanks for the help.

Well with Space Marines its not necessary to nerf them in any way in my opinion. A single marine squad should be beyond just a challenge, it should be a life or death situation for any PC party. If you look at the statlines for CSM in OW Enemies of Humanity they provide a good reference for loyalist marines. (pg. 115)

If you are making these marines out to be enemies then best of luck to you, because RPing a Space Marine assault against PCs can be a terrible feeling as a GM. When your enemy NPCs have enough combat experience and training to simply out-think the PCs and enough firepower to destroy them ten times over it can feel like you're bludgeoning them into submission with a heavy mallet.

The last thing you should do is artificially inhibit the way marines would act in a situation for the sake of the party. They are not going to walk into an ambush, they are not going to stand out in the open, and they will not fight in unfavorable odds or environments. These are humanities killing machines, and you gotta represent them as such.

If you are going to involve marines then I hope your players are ready for it.

Dude... what are you on about? I feel like you are under the assumption that anyone other than yourself is incapable of running Astartes "correctly."

Thanks for the advice... again, but I have it covered.

EDIT: Using the CSM from OW Enemies. I totally forgot about that one.

The Soul Reaver adventure has a Loyalist Marine who was captured by the Dark Eldar. He's a Black Templar, I think.

Dafuq? You posted to this board looking for advice, so I gave you mine. If my language seemed threatening that was not the intention, but **** you took it twenty steps too far.

I now have this image in my head, terrible as it would be, of a weird angle of Space Hulk, but where the party, the crew of the Rogue Trader's ship, are opposed by a crack team of Space Marines, boarding their ship to take them out, for whatever reason, and the players having to come up with ways to stymie them. Wouldn't want to be those Explorers, personally , but it is, on some level, one of the main jobs Astartes were made for, according to the genestealer-murder spree board game, anyway.

However your party's encounter with the Angels of Death goes, best of luck, and I hope they have fun.

Dafuq? You posted to this board looking for advice, so I gave you mine. If my language seemed threatening that was not the intention, but **** you took it twenty steps too far.

I posted looking for a stat block - not advice.

Twenty is a bit much. Let's call it eighteen.

I now have this image in my head, terrible as it would be, of a weird angle of Space Hulk, but where the party, the crew of the Rogue Trader's ship, are opposed by a crack team of Space Marines, boarding their ship to take them out, for whatever reason, and the players having to come up with ways to stymie them. Wouldn't want to be those Explorers, personally , but it is, on some level, one of the main jobs Astartes were made for, according to the genestealer-murder spree board game, anyway.

However your party's encounter with the Angels of Death goes, best of luck, and I hope they have fun.

To introduce the game, I just ran a massive battle on T'ros that they were key to. The Raptors got the drop on them, and so the official start of the game where they really get into the thick of it will be them traversing hostile territory to a pre-designated fallback point. All the encounters will be completely up to them whether or not they engage or attempt to skirt around the problem using stealth - or their brains - and one such encounter will have Raptors in it. I haven't decided yet whether they will be Scout Marines or full fledged battle brothers.

Either way, it will be epic.

Also, your scenario sounds insanely fun. Deadly and fun.

DH has states for them too. You can use the Grey Knights provided in the the Daemon Hunter book, or from the adventure where the PC's are exploring a Space Hulk (can't remember the name and my books are not with me).

The ones provided in Lure of the Expanse had similar stats I believe.

DH has states for them too. You can use the Grey Knights provided in the the Daemon Hunter book, or from the adventure where the PC's are exploring a Space Hulk (can't remember the name and my books are not with me).

It was one of the scenarios in Purge the Unclean, the first adventure book.I think the marine there was a sergeant so you can use the stats for a SM with some experience, but I am not 100% sure. It could be the stats were intentionally not too high so the PCs don't feel useless, even though the SM was sort of there as an extra armor/plot device for the GM.

...why would you want to nerf them at all? The stats from Deathwatch actually begin to come close to portraying the living engines of destruction described in the fluff. Space Marines are genetically engineered killing machines who can survive wounds that would annihilate lesser mortals and still slay the enemies of man.

I'm with SCKoNi, if your players do anything other than run the f*ck away they should die in very short order.

Solid input.

...why would you want to nerf them at all? The stats from Deathwatch actually begin to come close to portraying the living engines of destruction described in the fluff. Space Marines are genetically engineered killing machines who can survive wounds that would annihilate lesser mortals and still slay the enemies of man.

I'm with SCKoNi, if your players do anything other than run the f*ck away they should die in very short order.

Well, you might get lucky. Dropping an asteroid on their head followed by a orbital bombardment of the planet for 30 days straight might work. No saying my players ever did this to anyone, but this was brought up by the PC AM on several occasions as a valid option to eliminate a genestealer threat.

I'll throw in a little thought: Have you considered using Black crusade? The enemies section there has statlines for both standard Space marines, CSM's AND Grey knights! All in one neat little package!

Oh, And not that you've done anything wrong, but I think what SCKoNI was referring to is that any encounter with any Space marines should not leave your explorers unscathed. One on one Tau fire caste are generally not the equal of the Astartes! There should be plenty of "friendly" casualties!

Hmm, dunno, does the Tau have a battlesuit ?

In our home game we are at around rank 6, and at this point - presuming well-equipped PCs - standard marines or CSMs can find themselves in what you may call the Rohrschach dilemma .They are extremely motivated, capable, physically powerful and experienced, but at higher RT levels your characters should be legends in their own right.Tau are not nearly as good in close quarters combat - there are Kroot for that - but boy, do they bring some scary guns.

At lower levels, a squad of marines with a sergeant can certainly be a a boss encounter. At higher levels, if you want a no-holds barred climactic confrontation, something like an inquisitor or captain with a squad of deathwatch might be more appropriate.I would not nerf the marines, though. They are meant to be powerhouses, so let them be that. If you want waves to be (hopefully) gunned down, go with ork boyz, gants, or guardsmen.

I don't want to sound like a Space Marine fanboy, but even small units of them should be able to do a lot to scare "legends" who are still flesh and blood humans. Depending on how you view Deathwatch (some say it is the best a Chapter has, going off to serve, while others say it's younger Marines, going off to gain extra experience, while they are still pliable, to bring back to their Chapter; DW seems more this latter), that same group of Astartes might be called upon, alone, to topple a CS Commander, and his retinue of suits, after getting past the Fire Warriors, and drones, or carving up the Genestealers, Tyrant, and distraction Carnifex; these Space Marines are often "Grey Knights" good, and often in smaller squads than Space Marines usually function in. Even if we just go with "typical" Space Marines, go with Ultramarines, just to deprive them of any extra bells and whistles, they won't be too much inferior. If you can totally plan out their movements, and shape the field to your advantage, good, but otherwise, they might have guns as good as your cherry-picked arsenal, and some better other gear, besides. Okay, I'm done singing the praises of the Astartes, sorry about that.

Is the Black Crusade reference for scaling, or for actual using? Even with the rules changes being ignored, I'm not sure how well the various lines will scale, beyond knowing that many threads mentioned how DH1, RT, and DW DON'T scale as well as they could. Is Black Crusade better about it, with stuff older than OW?

Black Crusade is a better reference than Deathwatch. BC was the first product written to the "New rules" and was intended for CSM's and normal humans to interact with each other. That being said, the biggest complaint about BC is usually the imbalance between CSM's and their mortal counterparts in combat. I tend to fall into the camp of "As it should be", but that's me.

The reason I suggested it is that Astartes in BC were intended to be at least a potential opponent for 'normal' heretics. They are written up in a format that is the same as OW (They are considered an 'Elite' opponent.) so I would find them usable pretty much 'out of the box'. They also reflect a more "normal" Space marine as opposed to the veteran lvl Astartes that are typically employed on DW kill teams.

And since I am using the "new" ruleset, those are the "Astartes" templates I will be drawing from.

Deathwatch - as a system - is much heavier hitting than the other rule sets. One look at the Tau weapon stats/battle suits from Mark of the Xenos as opposed to the Tau PC guide are clear indicators of that fact.

Very true. While I hesitate to just say Space Marines aren't "skilled", RT is very much about skills, negotiation, and long-term partnerships, punctuated with murder-hobo sprees; you might even often actively seek ways to avoid bloodshed, and violence, while Space Marines are not social creatures, for the most part, and their game is more of a Space Hulk lite simulator, where the enemy needs to be tough enough to challenge Space Marines, who are themselves established at a certain level of godly. They aren't dispatched to "talk"; they are dropped in to kill what apparently no one else can.

If you are already using DH 2.0 rules, then I'd agree that using the BC stats sounds best.

Hmm, dunno, does the Tau have a battlesuit ?

In our home game we are at around rank 6, and at this point - presuming well-equipped PCs - standard marines or CSMs can find themselves in what you may call the Rohrschach dilemma .They are extremely motivated, capable, physically powerful and experienced, but at higher RT levels your characters should be legends in their own right.Tau are not nearly as good in close quarters combat - there are Kroot for that - but boy, do they bring some scary guns.

At lower levels, a squad of marines with a sergeant can certainly be a a boss encounter. At higher levels, if you want a no-holds barred climactic confrontation, something like an inquisitor or captain with a squad of deathwatch might be more appropriate.I would not nerf the marines, though. They are meant to be powerhouses, so let them be that. If you want waves to be (hopefully) gunned down, go with ork boyz, gants, or guardsmen.

Sorry, I totally missed this. No, no battle suits. Not yet anyway. They are playing through a flashback prologue in which they are Rank 1. When they get into Chapter 1 of the Homebrew, then they will move into Rank 2. So, the Astartes they encounter (Raptors as fate would have it) will end up being the boss encounter. By no means do I want it to be easy. I want it to be a challenge worthy of making them heroic in the eyes of their hunter cadre.

I believe the BC/OW stats will allow me to do that with relative ease.