Lynata said:

Not permanently, but they're definitely attached to a specific regiment in most cases that I'm aware of. But I'm with Siranui here, that number makes no sense so I will choose to disregard it for 'my 40k'

Krater said:

A normal human cannot even be compared to a Space Marine. I guarantee a veteran storm trooper has only seen a fraction of action that an Initiate Space Marine has. They live for hundreds over years. Fight thousands of wars. I've heard that a fully equipped and experienced Storm Trooper could take on a Space Marine...if he was unarmored and in full sleep.

Bar the bio-engineering, there's not much difference at heart. Cadians are a tough bunch, pretty much born for war and trained for it from a young age. They'd be ideally suited as Astartes recruits.

10k Stormtroopers or 30k Sororitas for a sector I can believe, not for the entire Imperium.

Brellak said:

By Fluff they can not.
By RAW they can.

Umbranus said:

Yeah, but tabletop is hardly the most accurate base to make your judgements off of. If all it took to kill a Space Marine was 5 Imperial Guardsmen, there wouldn't be any left.

You can have PDF veterans in light power armour, beacause IG requires standardisations and light power armours are not standerd war gear.

For example, on Scintilla, Lidhl light power armour is widespread among officers!

Blood Pact said:

I'm not talking about TT but about DH and DW.
In the TT a lone Arbites with his shock maul could kill a chaos terminator, just had to have luck.

No, but a near ascension level guardsman can defeat a marine in close combat if he has the right skills and equipment (such as a power sword)

I really don't see why having a company of power armoured guys would be a big deal. Certainly it would be rare, but it's not without precedent. The Sisters of Battle are essentially just upgunned warrior nuns, so if they can run around with power armour, bolters and Rhinos, I don't see what's to stop any one else from doing so.

Umbranus said:

That's not really a typical guardsman though.

Letrii said:

No, he's not. The one I'm thinking about was a DH Character, so he worked for the inquisition, not the guard.
But nonetheless he was a guardsman.

But when a Guard Officer in the novels uses a powerfist to destroy a Tank, I don't think it's too far fetched.

Letrii said:

Actually, it's the perfect explanation for why you rarely hear about the Battle Sisters participating in a fight. Did you never notice how they are left unmentioned in 99% of all stories about some great important battle? Also keep in mind that 30k is just the official number for Sisters Militant. There are many million of the civilian Sororitas.

Umbranus said:

As has been noted: luck. The problem with this RPG is that even luck cannot overcome Unnatural traits making Marines invincible to weapons they'd not be invulnerable to as per the fluff or the TT - but as has been said elsewhere, it is best to simply take DW as taking place on a different narrative level, just like "300" isn't really an accurate depiction of historical events. It's about telling (or experiencing) an epic story, not realism.

Lynata said:

But at the same time, I'm pretty sure that Power Armour isn't built to let through a third of all hits.

Thing is, though, the wargame rules are hardly 'realistic' by any stretch of the imagination. The background veers all over the place on the matter... there's no one 'right' answer.

Simple tweak to the matter... any attack that does more damage than the target's AP on that location causes a minimum of 1 wound after all other subtraction.

Lynata said:

And Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader are about realism?

N0-1_H3r3 said:

Even Marines not being invincible has been pretty consistent, though - it has to be, because there needs to be a challenge and because invulnerability generally makes for a poor storytelling device, trivializing a lot of encounters (and with them the challenges of the plot).

N0-1_H3r3 said:

Not a bad idea, actually ... simple, yet effective. A third good option to counter the issue, if I've been keeping track correctly.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

Lynata said:

Clearly I'm running my game wrong, then... because the characters in it are far from invincible, and they know it. None of them are presently in a particularly healthy situation, and their most significant injuries (save for the Rune Priest losing his face to a Genestealer's claws) have been from Termagants and Hormagaunts.

Beyond that, the challenges of the plot are something quite distinct from the enemies in a combat encounter, in any situation - for example, my Deathwatch campaign will soon move to focus on decisions both strategic and tactical, where choices made rather than skill-at-arms or potency of wargear are what matter... because it isn't how well you fight and kill that matter, but where and when. The same should be true of any combat encounter in any RPG - a fight scene should never exist simply for its own sake, because that's irredeemably dull, but rather to drive some part of the plot forwards.

I think there is a misunderstanding here. The point is that it takes you a set of special rules (-> Hordes) to counter the aforementioned invulnerability, which lends credibility to the thought of something being inherently wrong with the core mechanics (-> Unnatural stats) and eliminates some options for non-standard encounters (such as an ambush by one or two snipers with hotshot-charged long-las rifles).

In a purely Astartes-based Deathwatch game few people will notice and thus it won't really matter much, but as soon as you do a mixed game the drastically different mechanics (it's not "just" the Horde rules, after all) will start to mess things up. I am merely of the opinion that this could - and should - have been avoided, and that all the different branches of the RPG would have profited from an increased level of compatibility. Not more, not less.

From what you make your game sounds like it seems to be pretty much spot-on and an epic adventure that's fun for everyone involved.

Lynata said:

Try not to compare DH versus DW, try to compare Ascension versus DW. The Ascension characters will either able to compete in the combat area or will be more well rounded and more effective at knowing things than the DW characters can ever hope to be. You're looking at an epic level combat focused game, you have to either use bigger enemies or more clever encounters.

I won't say that Unnaturals etc. are not wonky, but they're a part of the system that is one of the more logical things to make Marines big and epic, especially given the treatment some of the Ascended careers got before DW showed up.

To do the non-standard encounter, you have to figure in luck, skill, and positioning. Give me two or three sniper specialists with hotshot long las and I can do some substantial damage to a group of Marines. You'll be doing 3d10+4 pen 4 tearing, have +2 damage and +4 to crits from talents, and no penalty for called shots or to engage the marines at extreme range. My group's average TB of 8 and Head armor of 8 means they'll be taking 10ish wounds from that shot to the noggen- I'd call that substantial, especially if I decide to give them touched by the fates and some variety of rightous fury. And FWIW, you can just about make that character as a level 5 Assassin out of DH. Level 5 versus Level 9 or more.

Lynata said:

I just assumed that was because all the in-house writers also thought the SoBs were lame...

The 'minimum 1 damage rule' suggestion is a bad one to my mind. That means that more than 50% of lasgun shots will wound the marine. Heck: Hit them with a pointy stick and you'll get the same result. So a platoon of un-horded PDF with their lasguns or a bunch of gretchen are going to statistically take down an Astartes in short order.

Most weaker combat encounters SHOULD be trivialised. It's how you underline how good Astartes are, and give players that 'hell yeah' feeling. 15 pygmies armed with spears should not have any realistic chance of maiming an armoured Marine.

Sorry, but, if space marines are so good, why we need of Imperial Guard?

Planetary Defence Force and Space Marines should be enought.

In first edition Space Marines were the ultimate human soldiers, but still humans; those past days were better.

Limited numbers of Astartes, if relied upon as you suggest, attrition would result in them being wiped out.

Also pdf is for defense, space marines simply arent capable of consolidating a hold on a planet, there aren't enough of them to hold a planet. thats why its the guard that get sent on crusades to take and hold enemy worlds

Charmander said:

If even such a specialized sniper hits at all (given that called shots impose a rather hefty penalty), he has a ~33% chance to cause 1-4 wounds, and the next round will be spent reloading. It's more like an annoying sting than substantial, imho. But yes, at least they have a chance to actually get past that TB.

And you are right in that I have no experience with Ascension yet, so my comparisons may indeed be somewhat flawed. On the other hand I think that DH works perfectly, and the thought that Ascension may move away from this makes me feel somewhat insecure. I'm just looking at the fluff and how it transitions to the RPG, and I do think the latter should conform to the first.

Don't get me wrong, though: Of course Marines need something to make them big and epic and "more awesome" than everyone else, I'm just not convinced that Unnaturals - the way they work now - were required (actually I think they are way over the top). And neither do I think that they need an entire set of special rules just for them. Of course Deathwatch takes place on an entirely different scale of narrative epicness and thus probably cannot be compared to any other game of this RPG line at all, but in my opinion it is somewhat sad that this level of "epic gaming" is mutually exclusive and a seamless transition for the characters between the different games is not really possible. Yes, contrary to what seems to be the popular belief around here, Space Marines are not the only ones capable of epic feats, as numerous novels and codex fluff confirm. In addition to this "gap" between the games comes the flawed conviction that Deathwatch is actually not just a purposefully exagerrated epic narrative but an actual depiction of how Space Marines really work in direct comparison to characters of the other games. It is a problematic topic, to say the least.

Siranui said:

This - in addition to probably "just forgetting that there was something else" - might be a problem, of course. Several posters on this forum have already expressed a firm dislike of this faction, and I too do not believe that all in-house writers are above this, despite a certain obligation to at least try and leave behind any personal resentments to treat the setting as it was meant to be. That said, it still fits perfectly to those numbers, even if that is a mere side-effect.

Narkasis Broon said:

Unless they're Space Wolves. Those guys can beat back millions of Guardsmen and give orbital bombardment the finger whilst doing so - for three entire years .

I think Deathwatch's Space Marines are an unhappy medium - they are not awesome enough to live up to either their reputation in the fluff or the fantasies of Marine fanboys, but at the same time are not quite sufficently woeful to win favour from the Marine haters.

I wanted a three hundred page love letter to how awesome Space Marines are. I dont want to see them held back out of some misguided sense of fairness to characters whose game this isn't.

Deathwatch's frankly disappointing Marines fall well short of the mark.

Oh, I'm not a "Marine Hater" (in fact, my first Codex book and my first miniatures were Space Marines, and I still dig the Templar style), I'm more of a Marine Scepticist. Because the ongoing hype around them (which I see continued in Deathwatch) not only hurts every other army and their respective fandom, it also leads to some weird perceptions about what Marines should realistically be capable of (see lasgun/splinterrifle invulnerability etc). For example, I now find myself intrigued how you could make your Marines even more powerful when they're already one-shotting Horde opponents.

Given the special rules and weapons and traits that these characters employ and others will not have access to - even when they should realistically have - I find it hard to believe that they were held back by anything, as the gap between the characters' powerlevel does not seem bridgable as per the current RAW.

Hi, i'm another Marine Scepticist.

Because 40K is a grim and dark place...and these marines doesn't seem grim to me.

In a grim and dark place, you could be heroic...but they are epic!

For the Emperor! Where is the decadence!?

And yes, you can have your PDF special forces in light power armour!