Seems that nobody has thought about the Space Marines being all male from a more rational standpoint.

What female roles could fit with and enhance a Deathwatch kill team ?

High level female Inquisitors

A of SoB in better power armor with an upgraded carer path. Seraphim comes to mind.

Alpha level Psyker

Temple Assassin, something deemed to powerful for Ascension maybe?

Half the Ascension careers should fit fine with DW especially Inquisitors. I think mixing and matching Ascension careers with Deathwatch will actually be one of the more interesting ways to play DW so I really don't see the problem with the all male thing. Actually I don't see the problem at all, female gamers were fine before the game was announced, why are they all of a sudden incapable of playing Dark Heresy or Rogue Trader like they have up till now? If you don't want to play male characters then you don't have to play the game, how it being an option over just not being there changes that, I dont really know.

Kaihlik

I think its an attempt not to be sexist but its a non-issue as far as I'm aware and not something even the most ardant feminist would care about.

No, not even Milly Tant

I have a feeling that just about anything we will see in Ascension, PC-wise, would be somehow appropriate to see beside the Deathwatch at some point. Especially the Crusader , Interrogator , and Inquisitor . Just my thought.

-=Brother Praetus=-

Do we need another thread for this topic?

This is such a non-issue.

BYE

I'm pretty convinced that if you take a full DH Acended character and him into Deathwatch starting-level kill team he or she will be far more powerfull than the marines.

Reason?

The Deathwatch is a game and part of that game is seeing your character improving as you gather XP. if its anything like RT and DH, the starting level characters will still be noobs in many, many things and there will be plenty of ranks and thus room for improvement. A starting level RT character is maybe rank 3-4 DH character. I'd guess rank 1 DW is nearer to rank 3 of RT or rank 5-6 of DH.

Full temple assassins at least I'd rule straight out. They are more select, more hand-picked group than any Space Marine chapter and have access to individually tailored genetherapy and training which will make them ascend the levels of human performance many times over. A fully fledged OA operator should be something even Marines would fear (if they could comprehend the idea of fear).

Anyway, I'd say proper level is around Experienced (Rank 5 to 6) Sister of Battle Celestian or equivalent in any other DH class.

It was always intended that the 3 games be able to be played in a cross-over campaign. I was initially surprised to see Deathwatch announced so soon after the release of RT, figuring there would be another year at least. Now in hindsight it appears that they were working on RT, DW and Ascension virtually at the same time and so the cross-over game should be much easier to implement as a result.

Have someone play the role of the highly important, dumb, useless civilian.

Polaria said:

Err...a basic battle-brother is more poweful than a rank 5-6 DH character by my calculations. Deathwatch Marines are veterans so...

This really isn't an issue. Astartes aren't women, can we just accept that and move on? Given the way that the Deathwatch operates, if a player really want to be a girl that badly then Inquisitorial personnel alone give plenty of options

Ok, so Deathwatch (and ALL the Space Marince Chapters that feed it) are all male, or at least were male before they became something bigger and more badass. So what? Deathwatch is the Chamber Militant of the Ordo Xenos of His Most Holy Inquisition. Never in the nearly ten thousand year history of the Ordo Xenos has there ever been a female Inquisitor or operative? Oh, you say they are countless in number? Are you sure... the Adepts can count quite high. Oh. Well then....

And when an Inquisitor (male or female) states that they require a few specialists to complete their secretive missions people are in the habit of denying the Inquisitor, right? Oh. Well then....

So there are no female Astartes and no male Sororitas, but everything else in the entire game universe is surprisingly egalitarian given how repressive Imperial society as a whole is. This is a mature game line. Try to act like it, just a little.

Heck, borrow a page from the modern day US Marines. The Marine Corps has a philosophy that "Every Marine is a rifleman first." On the surface this is rather obvious, but it has more far reaching impact. The core concept is that no matter what a Marine's specialty is, they are trained infantry soldiers first and whatever their specialty is after that. For this reason Marines are routinely fielded with non-Marines in their midst as a matter of doctrine. Every medic is actually a Navy corpsman since they are expected to tend to injuries as a higher priority than killing Muslims.

So the Inquisition brings in all those specialist agents so that Deathwatch Marines don't have to be distracted from killing the Emperor's foes...

"Brother Sergeant Tomas, could you be a dear and stop purging the unclean for a few minutes? This tedious library research and transcription is not going to complete itself!"

I said it before, but I'll say it again. Complaining that you can't play a female Space Marine is like complaining that you can't play a Space Marine in WFRP. It's just a concept that the game doesn't deal with since it is not appropriate to the setting. Thankfully, between RT and DH Ascension, it will be possible to run a crossover game with female characters if desired, but if you want to play a Space Marine, you will be playing a male character. If you want to house rule the setting to allow female Space Marines, knock yourself out, but don't complain that you had to do so because the setting doesn't have them included by default.

Another one of those tirings threads....why are there no "I want to play a Xenos-Space Marine" threads?

All the Elf-Players crying cause they want to play an Eldar-Marine.

What about midget-Marines? or Transgender-Marines? Why cant my cat use a microwave?...........

Someone's gotta cook and clean...

Nurgle said:

Who wants to play an Eldar-Marine? Playing an Eldar would be really cool and I hope that we'll get the option one day. Either for Eldar-only campaigns or for scouts or pirates who have allied with a radical inquisitor like in the Inquisitor-game of GW. But what kind of Eldar would get into that bulky armour?

Mjoellnir said:

One with high testosterone...oh wait there's no such thing...

ZillaPrime said:

Yeah, go ahead, tell a Marine he is a Infantry Soldier. (FYI, Soldier is an Army term in todays moderm US Military, calling a Marine a Soldier would be to that Marine a insult, and to the Soldiers who hear you, they would also be insulted) other then that,I agree with you.

ZillaPrime said:

There is no such thing as a female Space Marine. Playing a Battle Sister is about as close as one is gonna get. If folks want an all Girl Power Team of Marines then do it in your own games. I don't want that forced upon me and infused into the subject matter to appease a specific group of role players when it was NEVER THERE in the first place.

Wow, the reading comprehension is nonexistent on these boards nowadays. Nowhere in the OP is "why can't we play female SM", "how come there aren't any female SM", "OMG SM's are sexist", etc, to be found. Obviously I wasn't clear enough about trying to avoid the female marine garbage that is running rampant in other threads.

Let me rephrase the topic as remedially as possible:

What are the most likely non-Space Marine character types, male or female, that might be found operating alongside and as part of a Deathwatch kill team in the field?

OR

What kind of human could enhance the effectiveness of a Deathwatch kill team?

OR

What specialist roles are there that a Deathwatch Marine can't fulfill that a human specialist would be more suited for?

Inquisitors, adepts(high rank), tech-priests, rogue traders and void-masters are the three characters that spring most readily to mind.Characters who's primary role is as a combatant steps to much on the toes of space marines. But characters who focus on spaceship command, space ship battle, social interaction and investigation would flesh out a kill team nicely. Don't worry, i got what you where asking first time around I think people are just frustrated and swinging at these threads the second they come into view

zombieneighbours said:

I wouldn't say that you can't be anything combat-related. Assassins can do a lot of things a Space Marine can only dream of. Like infiltrating a place in disguise, sneaking etc.

Hey i never said you couldn't play a combat focused character, i'd just avoid it is all.

For the record, space marines are capable of sneaking, they just find it hard.

zombieneighbours said:

Actually, most Space Marine chapters require their recruits to be Scouts before they're allowed to be anything else. If anything, they'd find it rather easy...

^ I think he means that Battle Brothers would find it hard to sneak about in all that Astartes Power Armour...

I meant that Astartes would have a really hard time sneaking in an urban environment. In wilderness it can be possible if the cover is big enough to hide them, but try hiding yourself in a city built for and inhabited by normal-sized people as a 2,5 m-giant with power armour. There sneaking in, getting intel and finding a way in for the DW that doesn't include enough noise to wake a whole town is a good job for an assassin.

I think the best female supplement for a Deathwatch team would be (Inquisitor or Rogue Trader aside) a Callidus assassin. Even though I guess Dark Heresy doesn't allow to play those.