LOL!

Of only people stopped producing rules that were designed to buff the Marines so much...

Kage

Some people want the moon on a stick, I tell you.

Surely the top ten Space Marines in a chapter are the Company Commanders which pressumable aren't viable choices for Deathwatch.

I think the problem is that someone decided they wanted to try to keep commonality with the wargame - so normal humans have stats averaging 3 or 30 and Marines, the finest warriors in the universe, average 4 or 40.

Sadly, this leaves the game with the notorious whiff factor and Space Marines having less than impressive stats.

More like Str 40 with unnatural Strength x2, which effectively doubles that. Meaning that along with their power armor they can lift small compact cars if they strain a bit.

AluminiumWolf said:

Stats that start int he 40's are impressive by the game standards considering that typical stats for normal human shlubs are in the 20's (and I don't mean nomral human PC's). Perspective is important here. The Cult Fanatic in the back of the Dark Heresy book has a 25 WS and 25 BS adn the Imperial Citizen is 20 and 20 respectively. A combat servitor has a 30 WS and a 15 BS. These are mroe typical than the PC who is a cit above the norm and Space marines a cut above those normal human PC's. Space marines are ahead by about 7000 xp on stat advances alone com;pared to a starting DH character. Chapter adjustments aside a Space Marine will have as a lowest stat a 32 and a high as a 50. Thats really good going by the system averages.

@Galaga

More like Str 40 with unnatural Strength x2, which effectively doubles that. Meaning that along with their power armor they can lift small compact cars if they strain a bit.

Um... exactly what do you mean with "strain a bit"? Your average SB8 TB8 Marine in Power Armour starts fully capable of lifting over two and a half tons and pushing almost five and a half.

GalagaGalaxian said:

Yeah - and since they are already breaking away from the straight 4 statline why not have stats that are more... Awesome.

Because a baseline of 40 is already pretty awesome. Consider this: You get up to 60 by advancements. Then, you add +20 for skill mastery, another +10 for talented. Now you go and take some dedicated equipment or let someone help you (a +30 shouldn't be too hard to reach).

Is a value of 120 to roll on awesome enough for you?

Hang on, I thought that this was a percentile system? Doesn't 120 mean that the MArnies (deliberate) are... Gods? After all, WP 50 is that of a Daemon...

Kage

Hang on, I thought that this was a percentile system?

Only insofar as that the dice have a span of 1-100. It's easily possible to arrive at rolls with no chance of success (0 or below) or - a little less easily - those with no chance of failure (100 or above)

Doesn't 120 mean that the MArnies (deliberate) are... Gods? After all, WP 50 is that of a Daemon...

No, WP50 is where daemonic willpower starts. Taking a look at a certain Marhabas, it goes a little beyond that. Further, I wasn't talking about pure characteristics in the prior example, but about the combination of characteristic, skill and circumstance.

Cifer said:

Given that a Dark Heresy PC is rolling on 110 with the same mods, no not really.

Big mods just make the difference even less impressive.

And that, I feel, is a good example of "dead pan."

Kage

AluminiumWolf said:

And I can max-out a single talent in GURPS just as easy.

Alex

I honestly think the problem stems more from DH characters becomeing to awsome, rather then Space Marines not being awsome enough. This is all hear-say from me, as I don't own the books, but if ascention characters can buy Unnatural Atrabutes as talents, it kinda takes the unnatural part out of it. As for the regular roll itself, you can't have it to much higher then Marines already do, or they wouldn't be rolling for anything. The system isn't designed to be open ended, it's designed for atrabutes in the 30-60 range,

@AluminiumWolf

Given that a Dark Heresy PC is rolling on 110 with the same mods, no not really.

Big mods just make the difference even less impressive.

Well... between a lowly acolyte and a Space Marine... guess which one of them is more likely to get the equipment that really hands out those bonuses.

@Quicksilver

This is all hear-say from me, as I don't own the books, but if ascention characters can buy Unnatural Atrabutes as talents, it kinda takes the unnatural part out of it.

Most of the Unnatural Advancements are relatively well-justified. Vindicare Assassins get several, but they're pretty much augmented past Space Marine levels.
AdMech Magoi are another contender - but personally, I'd consider guys whose only living part was a part of their brain pretty Unnatural.
Sages get Unnatural Intelligence to rather staggering degrees (I believe it was *3 or *4). Their background makes them out to be Dune Mentat expies boosted with augmetics as well, so...
Finally, there are the psykers and Inquisitors who get Unnatural Willpower. Hypnodoctrination may account for something there, though Alpha Psykers do get a little too much here.

Cifer said:

This is not helping your case - If the only difference between and Acolyte and a VETERAN Space Marine is the quality of their equipment, something is really really wrong here.

No, it's one of the differences and a marked one - most sources were quite clear on the fact that yes, the Space Marines are getting the best of the best.

Other than that, I consider the Marines to be different enough, with their stat baselines being ten points beyond normal human protagonists and their Strength and Toughness (which would probably be the points most people expect Marines to excel rather than, say, Fellowship) literally Unnaturally better.

But aren't Space Marines usually portrayed as Super Human? I would think that would call for a more marked difference in stats, such that normal human chars could maybe match one stat, but not more than that. A basic Space Marine in 40k has a Strength, Toughness, BS and WS of 67%

Yes, but those stats are severely skewed due to the fact that Warhammer 40k is a d6-based game, which means they can't really be taken into account because they are in no way entirely representative of a Space Marine's skills, being even more of an abstraction than an RPG system is.

Darq said:

Well the same can be said for everything else. Aspect warriors are WS/BS 67%, Genestealers are S/T 67% and so on. A normal guardsman would be S/T 3 - you're happy with the stat difference between a guardsman and a marine to be 1/4? So if a normal human was S20 in the DH rulebook (cultists/citizens) then you'd be happy with marines with a S/T of 25? That's 1/4 better than a human, as the 40k stats show.

As an aside, I find the lifting capacity of a space marine silly. Because it also means genestealers can lift cars over their heads. A car thrown by a genestealer would probably do more damage than their claws...

In the process of allowing marine silly lifting/pushing capacities the rules also give everything else the same range. I've never thought an ork nob was strong enough to push 3 cars stacked on top of each other. The background certainly doesn't indicate that, nor that marines can juggle cars.

Hellebore

Darq said:

Errrr... They are superhuman in DH, though. With the caveat that I don't know all the ins and outs of the system, it strikes me that the average human (or average player character, rather) has an SB and TB of 3 each. A Marine on the other hand, at least based upon the information that we have from the Final Sanction demo have a SB 8 (10 with armour) and a TB of 8. This means that a Marine, sorry MArnie , can lift 1,350 kg while dressed in his Y-fronts/tighty-whities (2,700 kg in their armour). That's almost 19 times stronger than the average human (as opposed to Inquisitors 4 times stronger!), or all but 38 times stronger when they're in their armour. That sounds pretty superhuman there. Sure, they might not be the most graceful in the application of that strength but.. yowzers.

As for toughness? On average they seem to be able to take a lasgun to the face and not really be bothered by it, and that's even out of their armour (on average so no Righteous Fury to turn a paring knife into the Sword of Damocles).

No, that seems fairly "superhuman" to me. Maybe a tad too much, but opinions are going to vary on that one.

Hellebore covers some of this...

Kage

Darq said:

A lot of the superhuman stuff is probably going to come in areas other than directly boosting a stat. Take a look at MILLANDSON's post on the various marine implants:

I can help with Kage's question, in regard to the Larraman's Organ though, since Ross has said I can talk about Deathwatch now. No, it doesn't cover part of the Unnatural Toughness trait. That organ means that Space Marines can't suffer from Blood Loss (unless it's a weapon with the Warp Weapon quality, because they don't deal damage like normal weapons), and they gain the True Grit talent (which, when the Space Marine takes Critical Damage, halves the result (rounding up)).

The only organs that don't do their own thing (and instead add to the Unnatural Toughness and Unnatural Strength) are the Secondary Heart, the Ossmodula, the Biscopea, and the Haemastamen. Everything else does it's own thing that isn't in the demo.

Now take a look at a list of the implants they get . We are looking at 15 different organs that provide a bonus that isn't reflected in their raw characteristics.

Bilateralrope said:

I quickly counted at least 10 that were pretty much covered by unnatural characteristics and the fact they didn't bleed to death and most of the others seem to have effects that are mentioned according to MILLANDSON.

And considering, historically that the intoduced this list in the White Dwarf that changed a SM's toughness from 3 to 4 in the TT game. Then most of them were directly written to explain those increased stats.

Darq said:

More importantly that would mean a basic trained guardsmen (and most other trained humans) would be 50%? Which it aint.

Face Eater said:

Well... no, only the 4 organs I stated are ones that are part of their unnatural characteristics, which means that 15 organs have their own rules that make Space Marines more "super-human", or, more accurately "more than just human".