What do you guys think is most useful specialty for a kill team?

I was messing around with character builds etc and I think a rank 4-5ish techmarine/forgemaster makes a real all around badass.

He can have a damage soak of around 30! Multiple melee Attacks, tons of skills and lores, and more then holds his weight with ranged combat.

Throw in a choice distinction and he is a beast. He can pilot your vehicles, fix your stuff, a lore know it all, deadly in melee and shootin, and is incredibly hard to kill.

All of the specialties are useful. Few SMs are versatile, even the Techmarine needs help. Oddly enough, if I had to instead choose which specialty is the least necessary, after RoB I'd say that the Tactical Marine is less appealing than most others. As long as you have someone that can Command the team (like an Ultramarine of any specialty), the TacMan is just filler to bulk out the team.

Most useful?

Apothecary.

Try doing a mission without one.

No Problem! The grp i master has no Apo and the first session was a hard lesson for my players. since then they use their brain first.

Exactly: Playing without an Apo is a complete game-changer that requires a lot of thinking, judicious use of fate points for healing, and an entirely different approach. 'Loosing' any other one character from the party has far less of a drastic effect on normal play, making the Apo the most useful in my mind.

Hardcore gaming means no Apoth.

Madboyo said:

Then the next mission will be hardcore for my players as they allowed Brother Lucian to die in Oblivion's Edge. And it takes time to request a new Apothecary and being sent one from the standing chapters. They'll need to act conservatively.

Alex

Madboyo said:

Space Marines don't like it when there's no chance of recovering their gene-seed...

most useful for what i wonder?

mass killing: librarian

single master enemy killing: BA assault

taking impossible punishment: techmarine

whole team benefit and survival: apothecary

all rounder: tactical

my personal favourite is Apothecary, my players think same. Most trusted by everyone, one that harvest future of your chapter, one that gives u last words and emperor/primarch blessing as he puts bolt into your skull.

I am not sure where you are coming from with this question, are you running a campaign with only one player? The new Kill-Marine alternate advance is bit of an all around type. Truely this game is team based and it is important to know and fit your role in that. I would agree a tech-marine are very capable, but they are in limited supply just like Librarians/Apothecaries ect.(with exeptions to chapters of corse that have more then codex suggests of these specialties). If you are considering playing a game and wondering what you should pick, it sounds like you have a strong intrest in tech-marine and you should go for it if allowed.