(I am from France, sorry for bad English)

The way it is presented, it seems that chapter will have far more effect on the marine advance than origin had in the two other games (DH and RT). Have we any clues about how "careers" will be managed ? I mean real careers: every chapter have Librarians (except for Black Templar), Apothecaries, Tech-marines which are far more than specializations of the "standard killing machine" that assault, tactical, scout and devastator are.

If chapters are considered has careers, then how these very specific roles will be fit in ? (elite advance, advancement option, branch,...) And if chapters are not careers, then how do they will fit in the career paths ?

Maybe am I asking something to specific on the game mechanics, but I am quite curious on how it will be managed...

I don't know the answer to this question yet, but I guess there will be some sort of "career" path for Marines. Lots of people have been drawing up marine career paths for a long time. One long time contributor to the forums called ThePatriot did a very complete career path for Marines, but he doesn't seem to have been around here for a while.

As I recall, his scheme started as a scout, worked through tactical marine, then offered branching options for later specialisation into Devastator, Assault, Techmarine, Chaplain etc etc. His scheme was very much designed for standard, chapter-based Marines, though, not the high-level, experienced veterans of the Deathwatch. I hope I'm not misrepresenting his approach, this is all from memory!

But given that all RPGs demand character arcs and character development, I would be very suprised if there wasn't some sort of career path...

My questions came from the fact that I cannot imagine that tech-marines and librarians begin as scouts. The firsts need to much body alteration (they are "marine tech-priests") and specific training, the seconds, as psykers, have to be very strictly watched over until they are strong enough to be useful to their chapter (and they also have a very specific training). So, I doubt any chapter will "let them run wild" with a scout armor and a bolter on a battlefield.

As spoilers we had until now seem to point that there are tech-marines, I'd like to have spoiler on how these specific careers are managed (and I think I am not alone...).

ThePatriot did a very good job on his Space Marines and I think Death Watch has much to prove over that free PDF. Patriot's Marines were designed for Dark Heresy games, they were fairly tough, but not uber-gods.

As for Librarians and Tech Marines, yes they are selected slightly different that normal marines and doubtfully go through the scout phase, but Im sure they have something similar (Library Assistant, Tech Acolyte, whatever) that could easily be added to Patriots works.

But hopefully DW will already have that in line.

Well, the fluff usually states that Marines adept at either psycic powers or with a technical knack get selected early and introduced to the relevant 'sub-division' to receive specific training. I've never come across a 'tech-scout' or 'psy-scout' so I think it's safe to assume that their full specific training only starts when becoming a full marine (with all implants matured etc). Although for the RPG I can easily image the 'scout' part is very common for all types of marines but probably they would have some specific skill groups or talents (like Tech use for the techie and a Psy Rating and Psyniscience for the Librarian to-be. That's probably the best way to show the 'potential' of the Marine before branching of on the career path.

But as far I've read bout Deathwatch, I assume all characters will start as full Marines as Deathwatch is considered to be an elite group

Well here they are for the better part:
http://new.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_minisite_sec.asp?eidm=108&esem=1

Assault Marine
Tech Marine
Devastator Marine
Librarian
Tactical Marine

They will probabely add one or two classes such as

Scout (Veteran Scouts?)
Apothecary
and perhaps some sort of Pilot/Driver Type class and Leader Type

Don't know how I missed those!

No doubt there will also be lots of interesting "Inquisitor's Handbook" style advanced careers/alternate ranks etc etc.

Lightbringer said:

One can only hope.

Santiago said:

Apothecary is listed on that page you linked as well.

So we are missing a Squad Leader type Character...Sergeant to Captain tree?

I don't think we'll see it. By the time a Space Marine hits Deathwatch they are veteran marines, which in almost all marine chapters reqires a stint as a Sargent. It also seems to be like they're trying to avoid making anyone a clear leader on the team, which would support them avoiding a clear 'leader' type carear, at least not untill the 'Astartes Handbook'.

I don't really think that there will be a dedicated scout career, mostly because in the armory article scout armor was referenced as something anyone could select. And because Deathwatch members are veterans most if not all members should have been scouts at one point

I also don't really think that there will be other careers, maybe one for the Chaplain but most things are covered with the current spread. Though I would hope to see a lot of alternet ranks for specific campaigns.

However, the "careers" represent essentially the specialty of the SM character. A Devastator is skilled in Heavy Weapons, an Assault Marine has a jump pack and is skilled in melee/close range combat, an apothecary is skilled in medicae and logic, etc. It seems reasonable to have a 'stealth'-oriented career/specialty, which would be the Scout.

Or the tactical marine, seeing as they often act as the scout forces for Astartes groups.

SomVone said:

Or, a Scout, seeings as most chapters 10th Company are scouts. Tactical Marines are usually battle companies and vehicle crews; which in the case of Land Speeder scouting we'd see Tactical Marines. The exception being the Land Speeder Storm which is all scouts, all the time.

-=Brother Praetus=-

The scout specialization will probably be an option in the tactical marine path, as there is a "scout" branch in the guard carrier in DH. But, I though that would be the case for assault and devastator marines to, so...

On the 'Leader Type' character; In one of the designdiaries they mention that being squad leader is on a mission-to-mission basis, depending on the type of mission , needed skills and specialisations, specific knowledge etc etc.

Let's face it people the "Careers" are pretty much covered. What we're more likely to see in an expansion like a Acolytes Handbook or whatever is new Chapters. I mean so far we have 4 of the 9x 1st Founding loyal Chapters and a 2nd Founding plus the mysterious Storm Wardens (which let's face it are probably of Ultramarine stock).

So that gives them 5x 1st founding Chapters not to mention the numerous later Founding Chapters that have become famous over the years to play with so I imagine we'll see stuff on some of them in the future.

With regards to Scouts, If people want to play at that level I don't think we'll see official stuff on it and will just have to stick with our own fan made things.

Take a Tactical Marine, give him Scout Armour and perhaps some more stealth skills and equipment, a shot gun or sniper rifle....Scout!

The preview mission for Rogue Trader gave us 5 characters, each one from a different career. The three careers not used (Astro-path, Explorator and Navigator) have lots of rules that only apply to them.

Final Sanction* gives us 6 characters but 3 of them are Tactical Marines so we only get to preview 4 classes. This suggests that the others have rules specific to them. The librarian and techmarine would have such rules, but I can't think of how another class would get its own special rules. So it looks like we are limited to 6 classes. Or I may be reading too much into this.

*Free RPG day isn't an option in my country, so I'm using the RPG.net review for my information on what it contains.

The classes I've seen confirmed so far are:

From Final Sanction:
- Devastator Marine
- Assault Marine
- Tactical Marine
- Apothecary

- Librarian ( http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=1417 )

- Techmarine ( http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=1390 Look at the prerequisite for oath of the weapon)

@Santiago

Take a Tactical Marine, give him Scout Armour and perhaps some more stealth skills and equipment, a shot gun or sniper rifle....Scout!

Well, take a tactical Marine, give him a heavy weapon with an ammo backpack and guess what you get. Or a close combat weapon and a jetpack.

A veteran scout class sounds relatively viable, even though Scout Carapace was mentioned more as an exception to the Power Armour rule in the Deathwatch.

The thing to remember is that Deathwatch are not on a par with other chapters of marines - they are veterans drawn from the whole breadth of the Adeptus Astartes. As such, they wouldn't second a scout, neophyte or whatever you want to call the newbies, cause that's all a scout is. A recently (in terms of decades) inducted space marine who has yet to earn the title of 'Battle Brother'.

Any marine can opt to downgrade back to scout carapace for certain covert mission types, but i would never see a scout marine being a playable career path in Deathwatch.

And before anyone starts quoting Dawn of War for scouts being part of Deatchwatch, i want to point out how un-canon those games are.

@Kasatka

The word you're looking for is "Veteran Scout". There are Marines who switch back to Scout squads after earning full Marine status.

Scout sergeant are in charge of training new recruits, so they must be :

- Veteran Space Marine

- Good Leader

- Good Teacher

Any Space Marine old enought is a veteran, but not all are good leader and even less are good teacher. Sergeant Cyrus from Dawn of War 2 is a scout sergeant because he has all these traits (he seems to be the more level headed guy, except for the librarian perhaps).

I'm a little upset that there is no mention of the Space MAchine Chaplans, they are a major member of some of those forces, especialy the Dark Angels and Blood Angels. That will be the first thing that i home brew, mostly based on Priest and Missionary roles, since they do play that role for the Space MArines.