There's probably old threads on this, but I couldn't find any recent ones on the subject.

Rites of Battle had a blurb about adding Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader characters into your Deathwatch Campaign and vice versa. I'm not sure how wise an idea it is to add a Space Marine into the other two, but when you think about DH and RT in Deathwatch, I find that most people go immediately go "omg, I can have inquisitors and sisters of battle in Deathwatch!". But there seems atleast an issue to start.

In the tabletop game, Space Marines and Sisters of Battle differ in a lot of respects, but they have the same powered guns.

In a DW game, bolt guns do 2d10+5X and in DH they do 1d10+5X. I know that space marine bolters are supposted to be superb pieces of tech craft, but aren't sisters bolters supposed to have the same amount of care and precision.

Now, I know they're two different games and concepts. DH is about mystery and intrigue while DW is about the most explosive action paced game I've ever seen. If you're not a Space marine in DW, it goes without saying that you shouldn't be as good as your space marine counterparts at combat, but what about the simple matter of just keeping up? Is it enough that they can't take damage like a space marine or do awesome space marine things, which also include automatic Righteous fury against Xenos?

Thoughts?

Fluff, which DH & DW are based on to a greater degree, as we all know, is divergent from TT.

Well of course. But should there be a boost for DH and RT players going into DW? I'll freely admit that I haven't played either of these, though I've gone over the material. It's not for lack of trying, but a lack of finding other people to play with. Those poor poor souls never know what they're missing out on.

There is a simular thread in the DH ,forums, basicly what most seem to agree on is that DH and DW are scaled differantly, so If you put a Sister in your DW game you may consider increasing the bolter to a simular damage of the Astartes. 2d10+2 maybe or something along these lines.

If you ask me, bolters in DH are badly underpowered (basically shotguns with some armour penetration), while in DW they are a bit overpowered (if small groups of Space Marines armed with standard bolters could evaporate hordes as easily as they do in DW , they would have stopped the Tyranid invasion of Ultima Segmentum dead in it's tracks...). If there is ever a 2nd edition of the WH40KRP system, I hope that they re-stat boltguns to a mid-point between the two...

Yeah, but in the segmentium their horde magnitude was infinity. That means they get infinite attacks on a player. So in truth they were lucky they even held them back.

No but seriously. I started looking at the DW book first, and then the regular books, and was suprised at the disparity. Boltguns are basically handcannons that explode. They almost do as much damage as just a stubber in DH, right? I don't think that's right. Of course they are the iconic weapon of the 40k universe, and at that level, 2d10+5 would make them the most broken weapon ever.

Frostfire said:

Space Marines are bigger and stronger than regular humans. That means they can carry larger guns and handle stronger recoil. Meaning that a SM bolter can fire a larger bolt shell, which would make a bigger bang when it hits. Craftsmanship can't overcome limits imposed by the person wielding the gun.

The RAW even states that if a human got hold of a SM weapon, treat it as one size larger. So a pistol becomes a basic weapon and a basic becomes a heavy.

Bilateralrope said:

This pretty much sums up the reason for the differing bolter stats between DW and DH. Applied in the opposite direction, This would mean the closest thing in the DH book to a SM standard bolter is the Heavy Bolter(2d10 X pen 5) which does not have the 5 base damage, but does offer a 10 hit Full auto possibility against hordes.

The Sororitas Bolters are not made for humans to wield sans-power armour either, Sister Power armour might only give them +10 str, but that is still a lot. I would agree that they are probably not totaly equal, but they are not completly inferior as they appear when the systems are compaired.

Nimon said:

Sororitas can wield their weapons without trouble in or out of their power armor, an sister with 30 strength is only as strong as a strong character is without power armor. A space marine on the other hand is entire magnitudes of strength different thanks too unnatural strength.

I do think it would be appropriate though to have some sort of a quantitative weapon size vs. strength rule. One wonders why an exceptionally strong techpriest for example, would have any difficulty with a space marine scale weapon.

Well I can not see any description on the weapon for SoB that says it can not be fired with out Power Armour, and it is just basic, but kinda seems like common sense, though might just be I am accustomed to always seeing them in armour, just as I am a space marine.

You are right, a Magos should basicly be able to wield anythign an astartes could for sure. Besides are they not the ones that make em?

A thought just occured to me that perhaps could fix the issue. I remember back in perhaps 3.0 D&D or something there was a feat called monkey paw, that allowed you to use a weapon as if it was a size shower than it was. So a large weapon could be wielded as a medium weapon.

Perhaps with modification to the weapon, and a talent that costs a decent amount of exp (since you have to be assended anyway), allows you to use Deathwatch gear, as you're taught to wield these unwieldy beasts of weapons like the space marines do. The added bonus perhaps is to have this for each weapon group, so they can't req everything.

You have to consider that Common Astartes weapons are more or less better than Exceptional/Best-craftmanship items in DH, which also contributes to why Astartes sized Bolters are so much more damaging. Better and bigger weapons plus better and bigger ammunition makes all the difference. Now that's not saying that bolters in DW did not get a little bump to be able to damage high armour foes (especially SMs).

BrotharTearer said:

+

Golgenna Grenadier said:

We also should remember that the Weapon Training (Bolt) talent requires Str 40. A Str 30 sister wouldn't be able to use a Boltgun without the +10 from Power Armour.

The_Sasquatch said:

The larger size of Astartes boltguns could account for a bit higher power level than Sororitas boltguns, but certainly not double the power level (factoring in Tearing and a higher rate of fire). These weapons are statictically identical in the tabletop game- which is the absolute baseline of the 40K setting, around which all spin-offs revolve. I don't expect a 1:1 comformity between the TT game and WH40KRP, but it should maintain the same general proportions. The difference in scale/detail allows for some reasonable variation (a few months ago, someone in a similar thread suggested that "Astartes"-classed weapons should have +2 damage and +1 Penetration over their DH / RT counterparts; that seems reasonable), but making two drastically different versions of the same Strength 4 weapon cannot be excused by saying "Well, Space Marines are bigger..." -even ignoring the fact that Space Marines have been "downsized" in the recent background material to simply "tall by Imperial standards" and not uniformly 7' (as per 2nd Edition 40K). -And you can't say that Space Marine boltguns should be roughly equal to Imperial Guard heavy bolters, because we have stats for IG heavy bolters, and in every previous iteration of 40K they are signifigantly more powerful than SM boltguns. Double-powered Astartes boltguns are a flaw in the game system, plain and simple...

Adeptus-B said:

Except that the TT game is balanced to hell and gone, to such an extent that it no longer really fits with the fluff that GW have otherwise established. You do know that, at the last GW shareholders meeting, they pretty much out and out stated that they only make the fluff because:

1) it makes them money; and

2) means they sell models.

Games Workshop is owned by Citadel Miniatures, which means that GW is only kept around to sell Citadel Miniatures. If they could sell the models without the rules or fluff, they would do.

Therefore, using the TT rules as "the baseline" for everything else, when the TT has to be set down to use a single d6 (meaning only 6 outcomes from any roll), and the RPG has, depending on if you are using the percentage or d10 part of it, anywhere from 100 outcomes to 10, trying to use the d6 TT system as a baseline for the RPG system plain doesn't work.

You're better off trying to represent what is in the fluff with the RPG, rather than the RPG trying to represent a small-scale version of the TT.

Frostfire said:

They are older threads, but this thread is repeating a lot of what was previously covered. You can also search for subjects like Female space Marines, wifes, girlfriends, female, crossovers, etc. will get you possible workarounds and tweaks if you're not satisfied with the weapon damage.

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp?efid=179&efcid=3&efidt=391488&efpag=0

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp?efid=179&efcid=3&efidt=394498&efpag=0

Just consider the novels and other fluff when looking at marines though. Regardless of their source of origin, the RPG is more about the fluff than it is the mechanics of the table top simulation. You wouldn't look at Epic/Epic Armageddon stats and equate lasguns to boltguns to shuriken catapults would you? No, and that's because it's a d6 system covering a huge array of stats.

If you play a fluff marine, you're an epic soldier that can kill hordes of enemies and fight the Empire's most horrible foes. Play a table top marine and you'll get taken out by a guardsman in your first encounter by accident.

tygre said:

Where is this Str requirement listed?

HappyDaze said:

For some strange reason I noticed it in the Dark Heresy book in the Guardsman path in the Sergeant rank.

But when looking for a page reference for you I noticed that no other rank for all the other ranks and paths have that prerequisite, and it applied only to Basic Weapon Training (Bolt). And the Str required was actually 30 not 40 as I had originally posted.

I just assumed that it applied to all Weapon Training (Bolt). I also checked the errata about this abnomally and nothing is mentioned.

For my mistake, a possibly misleading people, I apologise. When I made the post I was going from memory and I made a mistake.

MILLANDSON said:

I "the fluff", Dan Abnett (the top-selling Black Library author) routinely describes standard Imperial Guard-issue lasguns as blowing holes in Chaos Space Marine armour...

Adeptus-B said:

.. and causing bleeding wounds.

Dan Abnet is one of the better BL writers but he is still off in a lot of areas.

ItsUncertainWho said:

These must be the one's I've not read- the Ghost novels require some special circumstance or the like for any of the guardsman to kill or defeat CSMs. In these cases, are these guardsman faceless enemies (like just about every guardsman a Marine is likely to encounter in a game of Deathwatch) or are they special characters (which would totally give them touched by the fates, and the potential for things such as RF) or are they a horde, or are they shooting him in an unprotected head?

But again, I think the game represents the theme the authors were going for (epic scale, blow away hordes)- if you don't like it there are plenty of suggested rules on how to tone them down to DH levels.

on the gaunts ghosts front. they never get calm about killing space marines, it's always a big deal and its usually either power sword, hot shot sniper round or a whole satchel of det pack's.

having said that there is that time in the first ghosts novel... but we'll just call that dumb luck, bound to happen once in a while he was obviously using the pre errata righteous fury rules saying that he routinely describes it is a bit of a stretch.

And to additionally be fair to him. the Authors foreward in one of his omnibus's (I think its Thunder and Steel) specifically says he doesn't care about being exactly right, he just thinks of a story and then wants to tell that story as convincingly as possible. And I've got to say I think he is exceptional at doing that

@Narkasis

having said that there is that time in the first ghosts novel... but we'll just call that dumb luck, bound to happen once in a while he was obviously using the pre errata righteous fury rules saying that he routinely describes it is a bit of a stretch.

There's also that other time in the first one where one of the characters blew up a chaos dreadnought by detonating a lasgun chargepack.

Regarding the actual thread topic, I think things are fine as they are, with the two qualifiers being quality of gear and size of gear. Sororitas are almost at the same level of quality, but they're severely lacking in the size and weight department since their armour doesn't even nearly provide the level of strength enhancement a Space Marine gets. Now we can go "they have to be balanced at all costs!" or we can face the fact that any remotely competent weapon designer would jump at the chance to outfit these superhuman beings with weapons that make use of their strength.