It should be obvious by now that I like them Big.
My favorite character from the Song of Ice and Fire books is Ser Gregor Clegane, and they don't come much bigger than him.
Standing 7 feet 11 inches (one inch under 8 feet) tall, he is known as The Mountain That Rides, and is probably the 'ardest man in Westeros.
,
So what?
I'm not sure. But even that man shouldn't tower over a Space Marine!
He'd likely still not be as 'wide'
That said, Marines in the novels tend to vary a lot in height even between chapters, from 7 feetish to 10+ feet.
In the Ultramarine books, Captain Ventris' friend Pasanius is supposed very tall. I would imagine around 9+ feet. They explain the need for his armor to be put together with Terminator armor parts in order to compete his suit.
Space Marines are already pretty huge, after adding in a few inches of armour plating/shoes they are quite certainly towering over the average humans that they meet.
Plus, space marines can already be countered through a human sized corridors
This would be true if the Imperium didn't have a fetish for 'bigger is better'.
jacktheinedible said:
Up until the Space Marine decides to walk through it anyway. Then his passage will enlarge the corridor to fit him.
Bilateralrope said:
jacktheinedible said:
Up until the Space Marine decides to walk through it anyway. Then his passage will enlarge the corridor to fit him.
See 'Shadow of Madness' in the GM Kit.
Alex
There are some freakishly huge mortals in the Imperium (e.g. Catachans are a race of Arnies or bigger). That's not even including the abhumans such as Ogyrn who tower over armoured Astartes. And there were hints that Ser Gregor had a touch of giant blood in him, which would explain his serious size.
On a side note: he's a favourite character.
It should also be noted that people on the small end, and even a bit into Average End of Astartes size aren't so uncommon as to be noticed. There's been in universe occassions where Astartes (Usually Fallen, or Chaos, but not always) literally hide out amongst normal human populations, and the discovery that they're Astartes actually takes an opponent by surprise (I THINK this happened in one of the Abnett books, but it might have been Ciaphas Cain or something random as well, but I definitely read it)
But again, it's not just the 'size' that makes the Astartes, and a human of that size will still not have the toughness, the ultra genetic engineered muscles, let alone the redundant and new organs that make Astartes truly exceptional.
EDIT: Actually, it was one of the Space Wolves novels. Even the Wolves didn't notice that the bigger than normal human was an Astartes.
Someone standing at 7 foot, normally proportioned (most 6'6" plusers look very stretched... not all, but most) for a very well muscled human would make most people feel small. Add on a couple of inches in height and a whole lot more bulk in the form of their armour and the effect will be further exaggerated. Then remember many Imperial citizens are going to be shorter than the average today (poorer diets and lack of sunshine on many planets). Then there is the simple matter of the presence they have, and the legends surrounding them. Combine this all together and Space Marines would feel bigger than they actually are.
This would apply even to the uncommonly tall humans like the Catachans. Big people are used to being bigger than those that surround them. I am taller than average (6' 1 or 2") and so I am used to being slightly taller than those around me. When I do come across people taller than me, even if they are not much bigger, I really notice it. Catachans would notice how big Space Marines are.
Being bigger isn't necessarily much of an advantage. After a certain point it just gets impractical (corridors, vehicles, sticking out like a sore thumb on the horizon etc). Roughly 7 foot is probably about as much as would be practical. you can still get within most doors, even if it requires a bit of stopping, vehicles don't need to be excessively larger to fit them (which makes further problems if they are too big).
My personal interpretation about Astartes height is that the "average" Space Marine (if there is such a thing) is about 7 foot to 7 foot 4 in armour. Which means that the average marine is about 6 foot 8 to 7 foot tall when not in armour.
I think people fail to appreciate just how big 7 foot is. I was in the pub recently with my friend Adam, and an absolutely enormous guy walked in. Within about 5 seconds, someone had asked him how tall he was (I guess he must get that a lot) and he said he was 7 foot 1. Now my friend Adam is 6 foot 6, so I asked him to get up and stand next to the big guy. Adam's a bit sensitive about his height ("This is not a freakshow. I am not Lobster boy") but he did it. Adam came up to this guy's shoulders/neck. When I stood next to the big guy (I'm 5 foot 10) I just about came up to his upper chest.
Now this guy was not exactly scrawny, but he wasn't particularly heavily built for his height. And he was huge. Look at the boxer Nikolai Valuev for an example of someone who's on a standard Astartes scale...even though he's probably too lightly built for a marine. A marine will be much more heavily built, on a par with professional bodybuilders. A 7 footer of that build would be nearly 4 feet wide.
Kewl as it is to imagine that all Astartes are, like totally huge, maaan, it actually doesn't make sense for them to be TOO big. They are designed to protect the Imperium, and this means protecting the spaces where humans live. As has already been pointed out, a marine who's too massive simply won't fit through a standard door. A heavily built 7 foot tall marine in full armour could JUST fit through a standard door...going sideways, hunched up. Any larger, and they'd end up demolishing every building they walk through. Cool as that image is, it's not going to work on a spacecraft where every bulkhead is reinforced steel, and a marine is going to have to stop every five seconds to cut through another section of wall!
Another issue is weight. I'm guessing that once we start getting much over 7 foot tall, marine weight is going to increase exponentially. Result? Marines are restricted to the ground floors of any building that's not reinforced; any failure to do that means they start falling through the floors!
There's lots of personal interpretations about marine height, but I think a dose of reality does need to creep in somewhere; it simply doesn't make sense for them to be as vast as they're portrayed in many interpretations. Imagine a space marine boarding action held up because none of the tactical squad can fit through any internal corridors of a small ship!
Lightbringer said:
Another issue is weight. I'm guessing that once we start getting much over 7 foot tall, marine weight is going to increase exponentially. Result? Marines are restricted to the ground floors of any building that's not reinforced; any failure to do that means they start falling through the floors!
Don't forget that Astartes physiology is much denser than standard humans. Therefore they will weigh much more than even a 7' tall professional bodybuilder. And that is without the Power Armour!
Lightbringer said:
As far as I'm aware, some of those interpretations are as much honest mistakes as anything else - authors more familiar with Imperial measurements who're suddenly dealing with a setting where the standard system of measurement is metric, and mis-translating 6 foot tall into 2m tall (close, but not close enough), resulting in characters getting bigger and bigger because the human who was going to be 6 feet tall is now 6'6" (2m), and that 7'6" Space Marine gains nearly a foot in height to make him 2.5m tall.
Warhammer world has a life sized marine in the lobby
borithan said:
Being bigger isn't necessarily much of an advantage. After a certain point it just gets impractical (corridors, vehicles, sticking out like a sore thumb on the horizon etc). Roughly 7 foot is probably about as much as would be practical. you can still get within most doors, even if it requires a bit of stopping, vehicles don't need to be excessively larger to fit them (which makes further problems if they are too big).
This is very true, my last year in the Marine Corps, I was an instructor in urban warfare. One fo the biggest things we always harped on was being about move while keeping a very low profile. I always maintained that urban combat was a short person's battlefield. If I had my way, the Corps would have a specialized urban fighting unit with a maximum height of 5'2" for all of its members.
Baradiel said:
Being bigger isn't necessarily much of an advantage. After a certain point it just gets impractical (corridors, vehicles, sticking out like a sore thumb on the horizon etc). Roughly 7 foot is probably about as much as would be practical. you can still get within most doors, even if it requires a bit of stopping, vehicles don't need to be excessively larger to fit them (which makes further problems if they are too big).
This is very true, my last year in the Marine Corps, I was an instructor in urban warfare. One fo the biggest things we always harped on was being about move while keeping a very low profile. I always maintained that urban combat was a short person's battlefield. If I had my way, the Corps would have a specialized urban fighting unit with a maximum height of 5'2" for all of its members.
Yeah, but that applies to real life soldiers, who don't really have the same incredible resistance to death (some would even say quasi-immunity) Space Marines get when they obtain their numerous implants and their Power Armor...And don't bring the topic of bulletproof protections, they're just "better than nothing", but they really can't compare to Power Armor.
I think the meaning of Marine size has been overestimated. Maybe it just simply wasn't part of the original design parameters when Emperor designed them? Maybe the fact that they DID become so big was just a testament to compromises made in design?
We have to remember that Marines are not the pinnacle of Imperial Technology. They are a very successfull compromise. Imperial Technology is capable of producing 5" women who will kick Marine ass (think of Temple Assassins). But they are tailor-made, not mass produced. Marines, on the other hand, were suposed to be mass-produced in numbers which current chapters can only dream off. Remember, the original marines came in legions of tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands each. Although they were made durable, they still died in thousands due to the horrific destructive power of ship board orbital weapons. And you had to be able to make more fast.
Maybe the best compromise was to pick healthy males, feed them steroids and then go from that. Okay, the end result is that they can't enter non-STC buildings and are big targets, but so what? Don't overanalyze the design too much.
Oh, and I'm also pretty sure making them bigger and bigger wasn't intended for power armor purposes because you see 5" tall Sisters going about in power armor, but you don't see anyone giving Ogryns (who outmass Marine easily) power armor. I think it was one of those "powerfull, cheap, small - pick one" -kind of deals.