Spacemarine, Necron, Tau and Dark Eldar Stats...

By Kas, in Dark Heresy

At lunch I'm going to post up my Space Marine and Dark Eldar Stats, then Later I'll post up my Necron and Tau Stats.

Could I get some peer reveiw on my stats, i'm hoping for them to accurately portray the appropriate model from the game as well as give a reasonable enemy for the PC's to encounter ... though a hard one at that though.

Space Marine
Stats
Ws 63
Bs 62
S 48 (8)
T 47 (8)
Ag 35
Int 35
Per 50
WP 52
Fel 39
Move:
4/8/12/24
Wounds:
17

Traits:
Weapon Mastery, Fire on the move, And they shall know no fear, Perfect Toughness, Fear 1.

Talents:
Ambidextrous, Blade Master, Bulging Biceps, Cleanse & Purify, Combat Master, Crushing Blow, Disarm, Hardy, Hatred (Traitor Legions), Mighty Shot, Nerves of Steel, Quick Draw, Rapid Reload, True Grit, Two Weapon Wielder, Hieghtened Senses,

Equipment:
Weapons:
Astartes pattern Bolt Gun (Good Quality, Tearing, Red Dot, Telescopic Scope, 1d10+5 Explosive, Pen4, S/3/-, Range 110m

Adamantium Short sword (Mono, 1d10+12, Pen 2, attachable to bolt gun)

Astartes Pattern Bolt Pistol (Good Quality, Tearing, Red Dot, Telescopic Scope, 1d10+5 Explosive, Pen4, S/2-, Range 45m, Clip 20 (counts as club in CC)

Armour:
Astartes Power Armour (Good Quality Armour 8, Infar Red, Photo Vision, Pict Recorder, Magnoculars)
Astartes Stim Injectors (Unaffected by the effect of damage or critical Damage)
Built in Void Suit with Respirator.
Bionics:
Sub Skin Armour (+2 armour not to the head) (FROM RT)
Cranial Armour (+1 armour to the head) (FROM RT)
Bionic Heart (+1 armour to the body) (FROM RT)
Bionic Lungs (BQ), In addition these lungs allow breathing underwater and will allow survival in space. For a number of turns equal to toughness bonus x2 the space marine takes no damage from the void
Respiratory Filter (FROM RT)

Weapon Mastery.
The Space marine is considered trained in any human, ork or close combat weapon he picks up.
Due to his special Augmentations the Space marine may have a gun with multiple sights but only one may be used at a time.
Fire on the Move.
The Space marine can move half action and still fire semi auto with a basic or pistol weapon and may move a full action and fire on single shot.
And they shall know no fear.
The Space Marines do not suffer ill effect from a fear rating of 1-3. And Take unmodified tests against Fear 4 enemies.
Perfect Toughness.
A Space marine is engineered to withstand some of the most brutal environments in the known galaxy, walking where other men would die instantly. A space marine’s body is designed to withstand severe combat injuries and as such will ignore all critical hit results that cause blood loss, death due to limb removal and death by shock. They take half damage (after toughness and armour if counted) from fire, electricity, suffocation or similar environmental hazards. A space marine takes one less dice of damage from toxic damage before dice are rolled if it is ingested, contact or airborne.

Astartes bolt weapons do 2D10 X Pen 5 Tearing.

Base stats seem OK, though the FEL is perhaps a bit high for a "generic marine". Probably about right for a Sergeant though.

Traits seem a little odd: "Fire on the move" seems to be a blend of Stabilized and Hip Shooting. (nothing wrong there)

"Perfect toughness" seems OK considering SM fluff.

"And they shall know no fear" is a bit awkward as written. Why not just use Fearless?

Fear 1 is absolutely appropriate. A good case could be made for Fear 2. Astartes at war are traumatizing even to hardened souls....

Talents: I would definately add Autosanguine, Lightning Reflexes, Light Sleeper, Chemgeld and Fearless to your list as a bare minimum. Crippling Strike, Swift Attack, Orthoproxy (not as an implant, but from hypno-doctrination), Rapid Reaction, Sure Strike and Technical Knock are highly recommended. Depending on the Chapter, Berserk Charge and Furious Assault might be appropriate (Blood Angels come to mind). Likewise, Ultramarines would have Hatred: Tyranids. Dark Angels would have some of those "mental fortress" themed talents. Space Wolves might have Frenzy and Battle Rage. Iron Hands would have some of the "Techpriest only" talents. I am assuming you left off the weapon talents to save space? Since you are using Rogue Trader stuff I would absolutely add Unarmed Warrior to the talents list as well.

Armour: The power armour in the DH core book is considered to be a "lesser" form of armour from that used by the Holy Astartes. Brother Sergeant Agamar from PTU was likely wearing "artificer armour" (improved quality) so I would put basic Astartes Power Armour around Armour 10. Obviously it has the backpack unit to go with it so operational duration is potentially several months without a recharge instead of the craptastic 1D5 hours.

Not at all a bad start. cool.gif

In my games I dont like to draw the distinction between Spacemarine and Non-spacemarine armours. The reason beiong it not only complicates rules and thier were no examples of such in the original rule books. But also because there is no distinction between them on the tabletop with the commisars bolt pistol being as effective as a Tactical marines or more importantly that a IG's Plasma gun is just as powerful as there is no indication that there is any greater gift in power because of small increases in zize (also it begins to get silly with game mechanics with a spacemarine bolter doing more damage potential than an ordinary plasma gun and the same as a mans heavy bolter)

I will post revised rules though, I dont want to add to many skills to them as it will negate the ability to increase thier skills and talents as they increase in rank.

I wont be adding fearless the reason why is because spacemarines are not fearless, they are **** near close in the fluff but far from it, to give them fearless would take away from the enemies that truly are fearless, anyway, a Spacemarine enemy to the PC is not going to be afraid of anything they can send against it.

Or Weapons etc.

For Fel a Space Marine probably has a penalty for dealing with non Astartes, they might even have a penalty for dealing with other chapters.

The stat line looks alright for the most part but WS / BS seems high. Now I've been known to disagree with the published stats at times but according to the Creatures Anathema an Aspect warrior has a Bs / Ws of 55 / 52 which they are approximately equal to, a Genestealer only has a 65 WS (which makes it sound a bit on the low side to me).

Also if it's sub dermal armour gives it +1 armour point etc then why does it have unnatural toughness as well (the stat's seem to say it has that and unnatural strength although it's not listed)? You would have thought that unnatural toughness would account for most of it's implants, it already absorbes double the number of wounds, takes twice as long to suffocate etc. Obviously it should have resist poison, heat and cold. Even with that it's as tough as an Ork (correct) and an Ogryn (poor Ogryn, maybe IG Ogryns are much tougher).

So perfect toughness doesn't make much sense really. They used flamers all the time in the Heresy against other marines but apparently they take half of whats left after 8 TB and 11 Armour. And they ignore toxic quality weapons but a dose of Morphia will knock them out if they roll over 37, again surely the appropriate resistance and unnatural toughness takes care of it.

Kas said:

In my games I dont like to draw the distinction between Spacemarine and Non-spacemarine armours. The reason beiong it not only complicates rules and thier were no examples of such in the original rule books. But also because there is no distinction between them on the tabletop with the commisars bolt pistol being as effective as a Tactical marines or more importantly that a IG's Plasma gun is just as powerful as there is no indication that there is any greater gift in power because of small increases in zize (also it begins to get silly with game mechanics with a spacemarine bolter doing more damage potential than an ordinary plasma gun and the same as a mans heavy bolter)

The abstractions are there for ease of a tactical (lol) wargame involving upwards of a company or so's models on the table at a time. The game designers didn't want to clog up the system by 'properly' (as much as one can with a system dealing with a characteristic scale only 1/10th as 'detailed' as 40kRPG) representing each and every pattern of weapon in the game. They wanted it designed so everyone could rock up to a game and go "He has a bolt pistol. I *know* what to expect from that gun." As such, I would not hold tightly to the depictions of weapons, soldiers, or other equipment given in the context of the wargame because it is set out with a different focus than a more individualised character in an RPG setting. I can even see that you yourself haven't given the fact your space marine characteristics don't make a rough 10-to-1 transition from TT-RPG.

If you need any 'official' sources backing this up, take a look at the Inquisitor's Handbook, page 173, in the top box titled "Weapons of the Astartes". That being said, there is only a small difference between the maximum damage of a 'mortal' bolt weapon (15) and an astartes-pattern (20), but due to the nature of tearing (astartes are rolling an extra die, meaning more RF chances and likely a better chance to hit with their BS ove ran acolyte) someone more mathematically inclined than me might be able to come up with a comparison of average damage results better.

But I do like your ATSKNF rule. Immune to Fear 1-3, without the need for WP tests to back down (your mileage may vary based on how proud/arrogant you view your marines) means they're effectively Fearless without drawbacks. And Fear 4 is something I honestly believe most marines, the bestest of the best, don't see more than once or twice in a lifetime. That's things like eldritch sector-wide-conspiracy-theory ancient daemon-engines, entire planets burning in the hellfires of a daemonic invasion, a daemon primarch etc. REALLY otherworldly things even a space marine can't possibly prepare for. And even then they're testing it on base WP (the best a human can get is -20 with schola training).

I'd suggest you change it to 'without any negative penalties' if you plan on incorporating suggestions to give them fear-reducing capabilities, because otherwise they'd RAW-wise get no benefit underthe stated 'no modifiers'.

Is this representative of an average "Joe Marine"? If yes, then I would slighty adjust the WS and BS. Maybe something around fifty would be appropriate, so as to leave room for "advanced Joe Marines" ( veterans etc. ).

Of course the beautiful thing is we can just wait until August (or the next Presidential election...) for Deathwatch to come out and we will KNOW what the RP stats for a "baseline" Astartes and their wargear.

*bliss* <twitch> *JOY!*

ZillaPrime said:

Of course the beautiful thing is we can just wait until August (or the next Presidential election...) for Deathwatch to come out and we will KNOW what the RP stats for a "baseline" Astartes and their wargear.

*bliss* <twitch> *JOY!*

And then we can spend the next 6 months debating how silly the new SM rules are and asking why there is no errata.

As for the guy noting that Astartes bolt weaopons should be the same as the normal Bolt weapons in the book has probably not noticed the small part where it says the listed bolt guns should not be mistaken for true Astartes bolt guns that the SM use - which are more powerful.

2d10 damage for their bolt guns seems fine, considering the typer of enemies they fight. Also, without it they wouldn't be able to hurt eachother, which is definetly not close to the fluff.