So in reviewing the game in preparation for a campaign I am putting together I started wondering how new line tactical marine would be from a deathwatch tactical marine. Deathwatch are suppose to be the elite marines who excelled at hunting xenos. So with 13000XP to start a Deathwatch should be a veteran compared to a line non-deathwatch marine (yes I know that it will depend on the individual marine). So would a non-deathwatch marine start with 10000 XP as a guess, and what skills and talents would they not have access to at the start?

Salcor

I would the initial 1k xp DW marines start with, and not give them any of the special abilities DW characters can get (like bolter mastery or the tactical expertise), maybe, maybe, consider a -5 on attributes, but thats a bit much. Beyond that, gear should be the same. They're still space marines, and fairly impressive. But remember, if these are NPCs, then they really only need to be as effective as you the GM want them to be.

From what I can tell of what the mechanics are attempting to emulate, you can pretty much use them as is despite the possible "wonkiness" of the 'fluff' about the veteran status of the Marines. Don't give them Deathwatch Training and, depending on your thoughts on the subject, tone down Unarmed Master to Unarmed Warrior and then allow that to be purchased at a later level.

You would have to significantly revise the game concepts if you were going to go with the 'fluff' that suggests the Tactical Marine is at the "end of the line" of advancement as a Battle Brother moves up the experience levels, e.g. starts off as Devastator Marine, then goes to Assault and finally Tactical Marine. If you stick with Deathwatch 's variant then you're good to go on this as well.

Another "veteran" problem would be that Apothecaries wouldn't really exist as a starting option, but would be a "path fork" option later on down the Marines' career. Same with Chaplain. Librarians are going to be a somewhat more thorny issue since I otherwise like KommisarK's suggestion of removing the "special ability" and making them available for purchase later on down the road.

As with KommisarK's commentary, a reduction to the attributes would seem to in keeping.

Of course, that doesn't sound like you're removing a lot to turn the veteran Marine into one of their lesser brethren so... yeah.

Kage

Solo and Squad mode abilities could be changed to purchasable talents.

Weapon proficiencies could be split from Astartes weapon training for individual purchase.

Most of the trained starting skills could be dropped to basic and require purchase.

Reduce starting wounds to a base 14 instead of 18.

ItsUncertainWho said:

While there are certainly some dodgy skills in there that only arguably model a Marine, why would you do this?

Kage

just to let everyone know, the reason that I am asking is because I am starting to work on a Deathwatch campaign set during the Badab War. So I am trying to find how say a starting level Deathwatch Marine (be they tactical, assault, or devestator) would campare to a marine from any chapter (be they tactical, assault, or devestator.) So far these are good suggestions.

Salcor

Honestly if you just dropped deathwatch training that's a pretty big nerf right there. Not having to confirm attack rolls on righteous fury is a big deal.

Stalker0 said:

Some of us killed that rule to begin with, as the RF rules felt a little out of control, but yes, if you're using RAW RF, or parts of it, this would be a huge difference.

Something RP wise to consider is the chapters will behave more like, well, chapters. The book talks about different reasons marines are selected for a tour in the Deathwatch, but one of the things they always look for is the whole 'works well with others' trait. A 'standard' marine is likely to behave in a more 'chapter approved' way because he's surrounded by his brothers. The slow pitch example is the Black Templars that with their brothers would denounce the witch and kill the witch, but maybe the one that stands side by side with one in a DW KT thinks differently. To me, the structure and rigors of the chapter can, at times, be a liability.

One thing that stands out to me is the squad cohesion distance. I think normal space Marine training would be a lot less normally perhaps half the distance or less.

Face Eater said:

You could take the view that normal SM's don't have cohesion like Deathwatch, they are always in squad mode since they will always be fighting with their Chapter brothers.

ItsUncertainWho said:

Perhaps allow marines fighting amongst their own chapter don't have to try to engage in squad or solo mode, it's all free- or consider them always in both? But as for distance, I'd think even a marine deployed with his own chapter is eventually going to figure he's on his own and start acting accordingly.

The 'theme' of squad mode is brothers supporting each other, yes, so there has to be some sort of distance. I'm mixed and see the benefits of reducing and increasing the range of quad mode. On one hand the reduced range shows the lack of flexibility that a DW team would have over a homogeneous group of marines, but the extended range would also show the comraderie and brotherhood that is kind of innate in each chapter brother. Not sure which way I would go, but it would definintely depend on the theme I wanted to portray.

I've always found the fluff about Deathwatch Kill-teams being "veterans" to be a bit confusing. It has been stated several times in assorted sources that the marines seconded to the Deathwatch are above average or at least veterans since each donor chapter wants to represent itself well. However looking at the WH40K table top rules I see that the basic Deathwatch Space Marine is no different than any other Space Marine. You can pay extra points to make them veteran troopers but that's the point, to make a table top unit of Deathwatch into veterans you must pay extra points.

Personally I feel that the first level characters in a Deathwatch game are fine as they are. It seems to me that since in the table top game a standard Deathwatch marine is no different than any other Space Marine there really should be very little difference between them in the RPG.

About the only difference should be that a standard marine does not start with: Common Lore (Deathwatch), Forbidden Lore (Xenos) or the Deathwatch Training talent. In addition a non-Deathwatch marine will not have access to the Deathwatch specific advances.

The really odd discrepancies that I see are:

* In everthing I have seen about Deathwatch Kill-teams up until the release of the RPG, the team always has a designated leader of either sergeant rank or higher. Of course being a higher ranking marine that leader is truly a veteran or better so he'd have to be a higher level that one (probably at least third). But it makes for a better RPG if no one is much better than everyone else, so I see this as a necessary sacrifice to make the RPG more enjoyable and workable for a group.

* Any Librarian in the table top game has the stats that obviously make them a veteran, so they too are a little hard to believe as mere first level characters. I tend to think that Librarians are a rare enough commodity that a chapter is going to go out of their way to train them and strengthen them before exposing them to great risk. Again I would think that a Librarian would be at least 3rd or 4th level before he'd be sent in to something as dangerous as Deathwatch duty. However to make the game more balanced for all players the sacrifice must be made to field the Librarian characters as weaker than they really ought to be.

Edsel62 said:

Remember once you become a tactical marine, fluff wise, you're a veteran (in most chapters). There are also tidbits in the DW Core book that indicate that it's not just the baddest asses of the chapter that go to the DW, they them based on skills, demeanor, willingness to work outside the chapter and alone, independance of thought, dedication, etc. Check page 31 for some ideas. They even go so far as to suggest that your tour in the DW could be to pay for dishonorable conduct, to regain honor for yourself and your chapter.

Either way though, the theme of DW is that you're a cool Marine, and become even cooler due to your super-hard-top-secret-mission lifestyle. That means, by default 'normal' marines have to be less than you in some way.

As you say, not sure TT can be a good yard stick here as the RPG is setup so that everyone starts on a similar foot, so it really depends on if the normal marines would be NPCs or PCs. For NPCs I'd stick most of them, save for 'heroes' of characters of note, with baseline starting stats, put them in close to permanent squad mode, and play up the chapter's personalities and differences. That gives the DW marines the bonuses of the DW specific skills, access to more advances, better weapons, etc. For heroes and character's of note, I'd honestly just give them whatever skills suited my fancy and fit what I was going for.

Man, this board software. Can't cut and paste or multi-quote. . .

I agree with Edsel62 about what a standard marine's going to look like. I don't really think that Marines need the kind of nerfing that seems so en vogue on this board.

And isn't the notion that tactical marines as veterans a fairly recent development brought on by Matt Ward? It's also fairly nonsensical, given that Tactical Squads are the most numerous sorts of squads and Tactical Marines the most numerous types of Marines in most Chapters' organization. I suppose one could play the semantics game and argue that every full Marine is a veteran after their ascension from the 10th Company, but it seems on the face of it fairly unintuitive to have the bulk of the Chapter consisting of veterans. That, however, generally depreciates the term veteran and makes it essentially useless in any meaningful application.

I think what I am looking for is what really differentiates a Deathwatch marine from chatper marine. For the most part the Deathwatch training is key to that difference. I think anther thing might be working with the solo and squad modes (which to be honest I think the 'modes' are a little silly) but since the solo modes are suppose to represent the training and specialty of the chapters then for non-deathwatch squad their squad mode would be the appropriate solo mode from Deathwatch and the Deathwatch squad modes would be unique to the deathwatch.

Salcor

MegaDandy said:

Yeah, the multi-quoting is a huge pain in the ass. I use notepad.

So the veteran thing I think is a semantics issue- "Veterans" are the 1st company, and are essentially the terminators of a chapter. Those aren't said to be the bulk of the DW forces, but instead the DW forces are regular marines that have "...faced, and defeated, countelss numbers of the Emperor's foes. You have boarded haunted space hulks and purged with bolt and flame the slavering creatures lurking within. You have descended into the very bowels of the mightiest of hive cities, and emerged victorious over the ultra-violent forces of recidivism and heresy." then you get seconded into the deathwatch. Probably not a Veteran veteran, but a guy that's been around the block once or twice.

That is why I think you're seeing marine nerfing for 'standard' marines on the board because of the way deathwatch is described as being the place where cool marines go, it's made up of the guys that know how to get **** done. If that is to be true, than your average marine has to be less than that somehow, and thus nerfed. The trick, and thus the debate, is what nerfs them so that the DW marines are indeed cooler, but no so much that they become little more than a DH Guardsman with some xp under his belt. Table Top, while it can be inspiration or general guidance, has barfed all over the DW rules in multple places so I'm not sure it's a good yard stick. It's like if you took two Guard units from TT and they had slightly different abilities but the same stat block, they'd look the same, but fluff wise one of them could be totally better/more accomplished than the other, but for simplicity's sake they leave the standard guard stat block but modify a handful of special powers. The RPG is the wierd place where fluff and rules collide the hardest.

Charmander said:

The only reason I brought it up is that normally you won't get a squad that has a heavy weapon marine a and jump pack marine. Not saying that they don't have lone characters or soldiers just that, for most part, they are much tighter more defined unit, staying a certain spacing and engaging in the same way, or splitting the squad into smaller but completely distinct squads.

I was also wondering if rather than having a single squad mode ability per chapter, a squad that continues to serve under the home chapter might have a specific list of squad mode abilities per chapter. Obviously some would be the same as the Codex ones (depending on the Chapter, the Wolves for example might not share any) but eventually having new Chapter squad mode abilities that aren't shared in the DW.

Face Eater said:

I do like the idea of expanding more chapter specific squad mode abilities quite a bit- it seems to tie in with chapter identity and all that to me that a chapter would have specific battle tactics or codex ones they're just really good at (like Ultramarines for example may use standard codex abilities but get a bonus due to the fact that they drill in them more extensively than other units, or they may have codex formations that others have forgotten about or don't like to use).

Salcor said:

DW training is a key difference, but I'd also include age/experience level/etc in there as well. The longer a marine is around and the higher he advanced through the ranks/companies, the closer to the DW marine he's going to be.

You know, the more I think about it the more I would change up what I'm doing based on whether these are PCs or NPCs. If they're PCs, then they need a *** for tat exchange of goods, and I'd probably just ditch the DW specific skills and give them some sort of bonus to their particular area of specialty (assault/dev/etc.) to show them being more specialized. It may not fit with rank or veteran status or what not, but if they're PCs, even if they're playing the fresh from the 10th company devestator marines, they still need to be able to compete and contribute with the other PCs. Just make them an expecially talented dev.

For mode abilities, I'd think about expanding upon the chapter specific powers (as mentioned above), but also remember that if you're in a squad of all your chapter, your chapter mode abilities will affect everyone, which is (typically) much different than when in a DW KT, so that's kind of an advantage there.

If these are NPCs, I wouldn't go through the trouble. I'd create a basic starting stat block similar to that of a starting DW Marine, toss in a couple of knowledges and make their skills represent where they are in their chapter's advancement scheme. Devestator? Okay, you don't know how to use a jump pack yet. You use different tactics and ideas on the battle field. I'd represent this through personality and roleplay primarily. I'd pick a cool squad mode ability that matches something in the fluff to grant them primarily so that the players could see that when brothers of the same chapter stand shoulder to shoulder they're an impressive force; give them something tangible to make them go 'I wish I could fight with my home chapter gain.' But I would still want my PCs to be the ceterpiece, which means the DW marines still have to have a +10 to badassery that the rank and file don't. For heroes or characters the players interact with regularly, or are part of their team, I'd stat them out much more solidly so that I have stats to back up my rolls for stealth, knowledges, and the like, and those are characters more likely to be on par with the PCs.

Actually, the idea that a starting Deathwatch Marines is some kind of veteran is a misassumption that has been perpetuated with some unfortunate zeal.

The Deathwatch will take a full fledged Marine of any level of experience, though it would be safe to assume that being fresh out of the scouts, or an important member of the chapter command, are very rarely called upon. Rather, the Deathwatch are looking for those Marines with 'something special' about them, an extra added quality that makes them stand out from amongst the ranks of their brothers, without going in to too much detail as to what they're looking for.

It'd be safe to assume that a Deathwatch Marine needs to be the kind of person who isn't too rigid in their thinking, and has enough tact not to just blast away every time they think they're looking at anything vaguely hostile.

Various specialties need not be restricted to veteran marines either, save for Chaplains who are a bit of a special case. Techmarines and Apothecaries are stated to have been singled out early on for their added proficiency, while Librarians pretty much join as Librarians. I think it would be a safe bet to be able to make a game using standard Marines with the basic character creation options found in Deathwatch, only needing to hold back the specific Skills and Talents that are tied to membership in that organization.

Also, the term "veteran" deserves some added discussion of its own. Any fully fledged Space Marine is going to be a veteran, having spent years fighting the Emperor's enemies as a scout, while those who are considered Veterans on the tabletop are likely better considered to be those Brothers who have spent over a century as a marine. The greater ages that a Space Marine can achieve, as well as just what we're judging (namely that of gigantic supersoldiers who are practically the best humanity has to offer) should remind people that this is something of a different scale we're working with. While 20 years of service is quite a career for a soldier in a modern military, I'd hardly consider it that long for a Space Marine.

Blood Pact said:

That would be because the book says that's the typical course of action.

From Brother Praetus in the scout thread:

Brother Praetus said:

Yes, the current 'devestator to assault to tactical' progression was an invention of Matt Ward's and completely flies in the face of 20 years of established marine background.

Despite what many might say, it is illogical to start out as a specialist, move to a different speciality and then become a generalist. The point of starting as a generalist is that you get training in all the different fields in small amounts, without being overwhelmed in a single area. Putting your noobs in the support units might SOUND superficially like a good move (keeping them from the front line) but all it does is make your support units unreliable, when support is a central component of strategy. If you can't rely on your support to cover you properly because they're new recruits, then you're in trouble.

An example of where this was done right is in the space wolf background. Their most veteran warriors are devestators - long fangs are the oldest members of the company and have a tonne of experience.

The original point of the progression was that the tactical squad allowed its brothers to explore different combat arenas to find their preferred area. But they weren't expected to perform the role of a devestator squad nor the role of an assault squad, because they aren't armed that way. Ward's writing says that a tactical squad is so awesome because it trained in all the other fields, but it doesn't mean anything because they aren't equipped to take advantage of that training.

Having heavy bolter training will help precisely one brother in the tactical squad, whilst having assault squad training will help no one - they don't use jump packs or chainswords in a tactical squad.

Then of course there is the problem with their numbers. There are 60 tactical marines in a company and 20 assault/devestator marines. There's no way a progression is going to work when it goes from fewest in number to greatest in number, it always goes the other way around.

Finally, space marines don't generally spend very long as scouts. If they're recruited around 12 they're generally going to have ~8 years as a scout as the Black Carapace is granted to them around 18 years of age: web.archive.org/web/20080410234936/uk.games-workshop.com/spacemarines/initiation/4/

It's possible that they run around with the black carapace in their bodies as well as all their geneseed and progenoids for decades after this, but doubtful.

Hellebore

Hellebore said:

There are easy solutions to both of these. You're kind of SoL if you're one of those people that think that any divergence from the most recent 'fluff' is punishable by death or, perhaps, by being publically ostracised. On the other hand, the Marine is in the Deathwatch and thus has the experience already to have determined that they're going to specialise into one of the tactical types.

For Normal Marines, just dump the separation until Rank 4 where you allow the Marine the choice to specialise and adopt lenses based upon merit (e.g. Chaplain, Apothecary, though obviously not for Techmarines).

As to the second point, there is some latitude if you want. That is, the idea of "getting used to" the zygotes, or the idea that the black carapace might take a bit more time than simple implantation to "mature."

YMMV, of course, but I'm going to go back to lurking. Merry Crimble.

Kage

Kage2020 said:

But we like it when you post, Kage - even when you're disagreeing you're agreeable

But to Hellebore's point- Nothing is sacred to the authors, why let it be sacred to us? They change fluff all the time, and if you don't like it modify it for your version of 40k; I don't really see it even hurting anything in Deathwatch or requiring real changes either, seeing as they separated the specialties anyhow re skill progression and the like (not everyone has pilot: personal, for example).