Now, I've not got the rules at hand, but going on the summary of abilities on the Marine charater sheet there doesn't seem to be any specific bonuses to resist disease. Toxins and poisons, yes, but not disease.

First, is that correct rules wise and second if yes, I thought Marines were more resistant to disease...

Cheers

Alex E

Unnatural Toughness should help a lot, as does a base Toughness stat higher than most humans.A GM might even allow some diseases to be treated like a toxin, allowing for a reroll on the Toughness test to resist (as several natural diseases are in a fact a result of bacterial toxin).

But more generally, Astartes are unlikely to become ill randomly during a campaign because it would just needlessly derail plot. Unless of course plot calls for some sort of exotic Nurgle-spawned plague or something, which might just affect a Space Marine.

Unnatural Toughness makes them pretty darn resistant to disease.

Dumb question alert!

When I roll to resist a disease and I have Unnatural Toughness how does that help? I tohught it only increased your Toughness bonus, not you Toughness characteristic - haven't got a rulebook at hand. Sorry.

Alex E

Unnatural trait reduces the difficulty of a test using that characteristic by one step. Essentially giving a +10 bonus per multiplier

Background wise, Marines would also be less likely to encounter disease as a result of their sealed suits (apart from the *idiot* marines who don't wear their helmets ). Plus they also have access to the best medical care in the Imperium.

Lightbringer said:

Some of us look too pretty to keep it hidden behind a helmet.

Runescryer said:

Anyone wearing a full mask helmet is a faceless mook and shouldn't be alowed to spend fate points.

AluminiumWolf said:

Even when they paint their own face on the outside of their helmet ?

Given Marines start out with a Toughness of between 40-50, a 10 % bonus isn't that great! They eith get ill or they don't. Also, there are virial weapons that can bypass or at least challenge Marine powered armour (like Horus used).

What got me thinking about this was just what viral weapon did Huron of the Astral Claws use on the Fire Hawks at Sagan to cause that worst level of casualities in the whole war!? If the marines were all sealled up and had enhanced resistance to disease, how could so many have died? Well, according to the rules, they aren't that good at resisting a +0 challenging Disease, having only a 50-50 chance.

Alex E

Could be a variant on the Life Eater virus. I vaguely remember background for this particular weapon which suggested that it killed every organic lifeform on a world, then rapidly converted the biomatter into fuel for a vast firestorm which would then scour the planet's surface, destroying the atmosphere.

Quite how scientifically plausible that is, I don't know (I don't have a science background) but one imagines that such a weapon would certainly kill marines on the surface of a world, even the ones wearing sealed armour.

I'm sure there are differing grades of such weapons; perhaps Huron used a less deadly variant of the virus?

It is confirmed in Galaxy In Flames that the Life eater can dissolve power armour seals (or at least it could do with mark 4 armour)

in fact it also eats the person inside a Dreadnaught although it is implied that it could only get in because the dread had suffered battle damage. The only things that survive are people in bunkers and the Deis Irae, an Imperator Class titan which has to seal up all its vents and shut down its weapons in order to survive

And yeah then a lance strike sets alight the atmosphere. I have to admit as a masters level physicist I have never run the numbers on that but it seems unlikely to work

Viral strikes generally mean that kind of thing. in the old game (2nd ed) there was a virus grenade that contained a variant of the life eater that only spread like 2 meters and then stopped

For anyone who is interested as I was

methane requires at least 5% concentration in air (by partial pressure) to be flammable. the biomass (amount of C in living organisms) of earth is presently estimated to be 5.6*10^14 kg meaning assuming there was sufficient hydrogen to instantaneously convert all biomass on the planet into methane you would get approximately 7.47*10^14 kg of methane. or 747000000000000 kg

assume that the methane is released into say the first 5 km of atmosphere above the planet and the methane is allowed to come to equilibrium so there is equal methane everywhere. The volume of this atmosphere is 2.5*10^9 km cubed or 2.5*10^18 mcubed

This means there is roughly 0.0003 kg/mcubed. assume temperature and pressure are 273K and 75000 Pa on average (it varies from about 112500 to 50000 at 5.6 km up)

pV=nRT

p=0.0003*8.314*273/0.016=42 Pascals

42/75000 = 0.05% this is approximately a hundred times too small to set the atmosphere of earth on fire. obviously this doesnt necessarily imply anything for other planets. but it does seem unlikely that life eater would work like that

[edit] except of course in the warhammer 40000 universe, where mathematics is overridden by the rule of cool [/edit]

Excellent stuff, Narkasis! (I'm afraid, in my ignorance, I don't really understand much of it...but it's very impressive! )

Out of interest, are there any alternative gases (ie other than methane) which the virus could convert biomass into? My scientific knowledge is so weak I don't know if that's even possible, but it's just a thought.

And presumably, the less biomass there is, the less effective the weapon would be, too...so a desert world would be able to resist the virus bomb better than a jungle world.

Perhaps we're missing some additional mechanic: you mention a lance strike to set the atmosphere ablaze...perhaps it's not a normal lance strike, but a specialist one... part of a suite of linked exterminatus weapons designed to destroy a world? So maybe exterminatus is effected partly with the Life eater, partly with lance wepaons and partly with, say, fusion bombs to destroy deep bunkers?

EDIT: I recall the fire warrior videogame showed exterminatus being enacted against a world. I seem to remember it looked like thousands of nukes being fired, covering the whole world in explosions. Presumably there are different types of exterminatus...

Lynata said:

ROFL. Somehow I managed to completely miss out on these guys until now. Thank you, sincerely, for the link.

Also, kudos to those people who actually had the balls to paint up a squad of these guys. =P

Methane is quite a dense gas - what if you didn't dilute it through 5Km of atmosphere but, say 5m?

(Ooh - this is fun! Science and 40k - can you hear the creak of natural laws bending?)

alexe74 said:

It's lighter than air, not heavier. Remember that most of air is Nitrogen, which is fairly heavy.

Methane also isn't as easy to burn as commonly thought to be.

When the first nuclear reactor was fired up in a squash court, back in WW2, there was a bit of worry that it might be hot enough to somehow ignite the atmosphere of Earth and fry everyone. But they figured out that it'd probably be ok, and if they didn't do it, the Russians would, so they fired her up!

Yes, you're quite correct - my bad! However, I'd question whether after a flesh eater virus has melted the world, the methane would disperse through 5 km of atmosphere that quickly...

And it still mean Marines are not that tough vs disease. Food for thought and mission ideas...Xenos bioweapons...Maybe Tyranids should just infect a world, then eat it!

I'm personally of the belief that Astartes should be pretty much immune to 'normal' diseases, and never have to worry about catching 'flu. The Armour should protect them against anything else.

If it's nasty enough to give a Marine the ick, then it's probably nasty enough to give them some Corruption, too.

Yeah: Tyranids just dropping aggressive diseases into orbit is the 'sensible' way of them taking planets. It'd make a boring game of 40k, though!

Siranui said:

I've seen background where the Tyranid hive fleets do seed target worlds with billions of tiny organisms, even smaller than rippers, that clog up the air, get into people's lungs etc etc. But they don't seem to be proper bacteria or viruses, more like insects...

alexe74 said:

well anyone who wants to post their own ideas for models, I'd love to see them. I mostly said 5 km so that I could get away with neglecting the height of terrain and treating the earth as a sphere. also biomass is not equally distributed over the planet. it would probably work in say the brazilian rain forest, but not cover the whole world. but I digress.

I agree that space marines should be immune to conventional diseases unless it has been either engineered for them (by a creepy tau scientist hopefully) or its a super epic disease like nurgles rot

Yes, we got kind of distrated - I thought you calculation was cool and interesting (I'm an ecosystem modeller!).

Anyway, you hit the nail on the head. The rules as written given Marines no way of avoiding easily disease, although, like you, I'd say they should unless it was particularly nasty...

perhaps the simple thing would be to just rule that nasty diseases are like toxins?

Alex E

alexe74 said:

And really, i don't actually remember any rules for diseases specifically. Even the Plaguebearers swords only have the toxin trait.