Cifer said:

One such situation would be Space hulks. Any kind of Imperial Guard unit would not have a chance of reaching the Space marines effectivness in cleaning one out.

And for another thing, I belive they are also a gigantic morale boost, basicly they are propaganda. When imperial guard fight the Necrons, the Tau, or the Eldar (or a big number of other races), they suffer huge losses, and things like that can really demoralise th Guard. Not just that regiment or pluton, not just that army, but the WHOLE Imperial Guard, if they know there are enemeis out there that the imperium cant deal with. But now, they can always fall back on "Well, we have the Space Marines, thus, we are going to win!"

The morale boost of astartes showing up to help would be nullified by them not accomplishing anything before dying, methinks.

@BladeHate

Actually the average dice roll of a d10 is 5.5 if my math is correct (which it might not be). Which means the average lasgun damage will be 8.5, or .5 damage done on average versus a TB 4 marine.

Your math would be correct if Marines got healed by shots doing less than 0 damage. Since they are not, the correct formula for calculating the average damage is (0+0+0+0+0+1+2+3+4+5)/10.

Cifer said:

I don't understand the healing comment, but I think that's just my knowledge of math that's insufficient. So I'll concede that your numbers are correct, but that still brings up an interesting point...

Even with an average damage of 1.5 per hit, it means it still takes a 40 IG firing at a naked, running marine at optimal range to bring him to critical damage in one round. They can't even guarantee a kill...and if the Marine had the new True Grit they can only reduce him by at most 1 critical damage per hit.

I consider that broken. Especially when it only gets worse when you stack on armor, weapons and tactics.

Bladehate said:

I don't really consider the fact that a character made to be a tank has little to fear from what are effectively the token mooks of the setting. In my view, it actually gets worse for the CSM when armor, weapons, and tactics are employed, as there are then likely to be far more options available to the IG platoon (superior officers and commissars, support weapons, Imp psykers, static defenses, etc.).

You don't have a problem with a naked character tanking 40 mooks?

And as I said before, the problem becomes even worse when you add xp and gear progression to the mix. Once that marine gets TB-5, True Grit and straps into Terminator Armor it gets a bit obscene.

Deinos said:

I dont mean that they should show up in the IG's fight. I mean, that if an army knows, that somewhere out there in space, is something they dont have a chance of fighting against, then it is kinda reasuring to know that your side posseses something that can, even if they are a few sectors away.

See, you keep saying "astartes are imbalanced/unbalanced." But you gotta qualify that statement.

Are CSM imbalanced because they can defeat large amounts of imperial guard who MYSTERIOUSLY lack heavy weapons teams, if the GM is too stupid to use the horde rules (seriously, this is what they're there for) and really wants to roll for 40 hits? No, because 40 guardsmen not in a horde is a freak accident and it doesn't reflect anything at all.

Are CSM imbalanced because they are powerful and make the other players feel weak? No, non-psyker CSM are most likely #3 in the totem pole of power, and psyker CSM rank behind psyker humans, as has already been demonstrated. From the balance perspective, their niche is that they're tough -- that's pretty much it. Even then, a melee-focused renegade will still outfight a CSM melee fighter at mid XP levels.

Are they imbalanced because they have good gear? Not really, the best weapons around aren't legion weapons, and human termie armor has the same stats as legion termie armor.

Are they imbalanced because they break the setting? No, the imperium relies HEAVILY on a mere 1 million or so astartes as an integral part of the setting, and making them pushovers is, in fact, what breaks the setting. Likewise, it has been stated that human defenders cannot hope to repel CSM attacks unless there are loyalist astartes defending. This is probably propaganda, but nonetheless...

All that can be said is that CSM PCs are tough. This is as it should be, the other archetypes are in no way missing out, and its a fair trade.

"I mean, that if an army knows, that somewhere out there in space, is something they dont have a chance of fighting against, then it is kinda reasuring to know that your side posseses something that can"

The army wouldn't "know" astartes would have a chance, since under your proposed rules there's nothing remotely worthwhile about them; they would just be misled by propaganda to think that astartes are anything other than show ponies. Which is grimdark, I suppose, but is radically out of whack with the setting.

@Bladehate

You don't have a problem with a naked character tanking 40 mooks?

I don't have a problem with a naked character dying within six seconds when attacked by 40 mooks, and probably dying within 12 seconds when engaging 20 mooks unless he moves into melee. "Tanking" implies a little more success than that.

By the way, the calculation was made without taking Zealous Fury (or whatever it's called these days) into account. Further, True Grit doesn't change the results that much, as any hit that penetrates toughness still deals at least one point of damage.

I don't understand the healing comment, but I think that's just my knowledge of math that's insufficient.

I'll try to explain (and hope my English is up to it): To calculate an average, you add all possible results together and divide by the number of results. Thus, you get the 4.5 for the result of 1d6+1: ([1+1]+[2+1]+[3+1]+[4+1]+[5+1]+[6+1])/6=4.5. However, you can't just pull out constants from this calculation if this changes certain results, especially with negative numbers that get counted as 0. If you want to calculate the damage of a weapon that deals 1d6-3, you can't just calculate the average of a d6 (= 3.5) and then reduce this by 3 (=0.5). The proper way would be to take all six results of the whole term into account, add them together and then divide by the die size. In that case, you get ([1-3=0]+[2-3=0]+[3-3=0]+[4-3=1]+[5-3=2]+[6-3=3])/6 = 1.

@Deinos

Even then, a melee-focused renegade will still outfight a CSM melee fighter at mid XP levels.

Could you explain that? It sounds somewhat contra-intuitive.

Deinos said:

Deinos said:

I assume you're directing this at me. And its been qualified. Repeatedly and mathematically.

I was using the naked marine as an example. If you play "for real" a squad of marines would easily destroy a platoon of guard. They do it in DW all the time, without too much of a problem. Your heavy weapons are easily countered by a devastator or assault marine, plus the actual use of cover.

And to an extent that's fine in a game involving nothing but PC super heroes. I just think it becomes a small problem when mixing NPC marines with my DH/RT group, or when mixing CSMs with heretics. Obviously your mileage may vary, and this is quickly becoming a case of opinion versus opinion.

And no, I don't think proposing the average marine have +10 or +20 to relevant combat attributes nerfs them until they aren't "remotely worthwhile".

Properly minmaxed CSM: WS 80 (50 + 10 + 20)

Properly minmaxed Renegade: WS 78 (48+10+20), +1 auto success on WS (and hence 1 extra hit), +1 higher inits.

In case you're thinking Unnatural Strength matters, that's why I said mid-XP... because both a CSM's original Unnatural Strength 4, and a human's nonexistent unnatural strength, become the same from Ecstatic Oblivion, as I believe Unnat attributes do not stack, they overlap.

The CSM's durability may or may not matter at that point, and one extra parry of the renegade may or may not matter either. The difference is subtle, but the renegade will still be a few points better. Its quite easy to wind up scenarios where a single hit will kill you or the opponent. Of course, the CSM is only a few points better in the soak defense department and people make a big deal out of that, so...

And its been qualified. Repeatedly and mathematically.

No, it hasn't, all you've attempted to qualify is that they take lasgun hits real good; all you've said so far is "the high defense race has high defenses," which is proof of balance, not unbalance. What balance are you talking about?

Saying that in a vacuum, astartes can beat some unusually stupid rank 1 guardsmen means nothing (we already know rank 2 guardsmen can kill an equal number of astartes via dirt cheap autocannons) is not an indication of imbalance, as I should hope 8000 xp chars can defeat 400 xp ones. They are sure in danger if the GM uses hordes like he's supposed to. How well NPCs can kill each other is not even slightly relevant to game balance, unless you count the abstracted rules for minions. It is also a constantly repeated aspect of the setting, that astartes are not only an irrelevant 10% better than average (ie. weaker than inquisitorial stormtroopers), but that one million astartes makes the difference between survival and oblivion for the Imperium of Man. So in terms of NPC vs NPC lineups, it cannot be considered unbalanced at all.

If you're talking about the balance of power between PCs, CSM firmly rank at third place in the power scale of available character archetypes. Being not first place, not second place, but distinctly at third place, is not overpowered, its bog standard average. All you have proven is that the defensive generalist race are defensive generalists.

Deinos, you're just arguing for the sake of arguing. And so am I.

I consider Unnatural Attributes to be unnecessary and overpowered. You don't.

You like your marines superhuman. I like my marines with just a pinch of balance.

Enjoy your game, and I'll enjoy mine.

In 1990, soviet russia fielded 64,000 tanks in an army of 4,000,000 men, or one tank for every 63 men.

So 16 million men could have 250,000 odd tanks.

So for a company of Marines to be able to take a world like the fluff says they can, each must be able to outfight 2500 tanks.

Bouncing lasguns is small beer. This is superheroic:-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wrNMPRriwc

Come back to me when Marines can hammer toss a Leman Russ.

Bladehate said:

You not liking Unnatural Attributes doesn't mean you like them "with just a pinch of balance", because you have not proven that UAs make them unbalanced.

If you are going to state your positions as unbiased as possible, Deinos prefers his Marines as superhuman soldiers, and you prefer them as only slightly better versions of humans.

Neither position is wrong, except the majority of the fluff would seem to side with Deinos on this matter.

Really? The fact that a naked Space Marine can take 10 las or autogun shots to the chest before even being in critical doesn't indicate an imbalance?

If the setting's baseline military grade weapon does not pose a real threat to a naked PC, then I do see it as a problem. Obviously many here do not, but to me it is an indicator that the game has undergone quite a bit of power creep, specifically since Death Watch. Part of what attracted me to this game was the feeling that this was not D and D where your level and gear made you effectively immune to "standard" or low level enemies. Unnatural Attributes very much break that sense of grimdark WH40K.

It seems clear to me that the initial design for baseline weapons and damage was the 1d10+3 or 8.5 average. Pistols have slightly less, and weapons that go from there slowly upgrade the damage and penetration values. With initial armor ratings in the range of 2-3 and most TB bonuses of 3, that meant getting hit by an auto gun was going to hurt. And it was going to stay relatively dangerous for at least the first 3-5 ranks, until TB 4 and carapace armor started making you much less vulnerable. Of course, your armor could still be countered by high pen weapons or ammo, but Felling is not so common that it can be considered a hard counter to marines.

As I said before, I don't think its game breaking in a game where most everyone has these stats. Combat can be scaled around it. And so long as the GM knows that the only way "ordinary" mortals and regular soldiers pose any form of threat is when they are formed into hordes it works out. I don't really like it but whatever.

The problem crops up...in my mind...when you start mixing game lines. A DW marine in RT or DH is not easily balanced with the rest of the group...or the rest of the world.

Some people find that completely acceptable. I don't. The setting is grimdark. It isn't D and D in space. Marines just give me that feeling of a high level fighter wading into a mob of goblins and annihilating them. The power difference between Marines and humans is just too great to ignore, in my eyes. Clearly I'm in the minority on these forums though, that's obvious.

And I guess that's fair enough. Generally if people are playing Space Marines they want to be playing their own version of Ragnar Blackmane.

Bladehate said:

Because autoguns and lasguns were never designed to take down Space Marines, so it stands to reason that massed fire would be required.

Hell, autoguns and lasguns weren't even designed to take down Orks by themselves - that's the job of bolt weapons, according to the fluff.

Therefore, individual lasguns being mostly useless against Space Marines, and instead massed fire, or larger weapons (such as heavy weapons, bolt weapons, plasma weapons, etc) being needed, is entirely in keeping with the setting. It is the setting that the game is balanced around, not the other way around.

Naked marines.

Not armored. Naked.

Bladehate said:

Course not. This is Warhammer. A steroid abusing testosterone soaked ubermacho Warhammer hero makes a Dungeons and Dragons ***** look like a Girly Man.

Bladehate said:

Bladehate said:

The Space Marines were the original focus of the 40K setting, and their power relative to the enemies of humanity never took away from the grimdark.

The power difference between Astartes and humans is the reason that the Emperor and now the Imperium even bothered with the difficult and expensive process of creating the Space Marines. By the sounds of it, in your vision of the setting, they simply wouldn't bother.

Bladehate said:

I hope you realize that "naked" for a genetically modified monster isn't the same thing as a normal human... Every Space Marine has technology built into his very body.

AluminiumWolf said:

Space Marines don't take worlds by wiping out the defending army. That's the Imperial Guard job.

Space Marines are the Emperor's Scalpel: they win wars by cutting the serpent's head. That means destroying enemy leadership and infrastructure with surgical strikes.

In your example, Space Marines wouldn't defeat Soviet Russa by taking on 4,000,000 men. They would do it by launching a drop pod right into the Kremlin and popping Stalin's ass and his high command. All accomplished with a single tactical squad of 10 marines.

@Zaldrak

In your example, Space Marines wouldn't defeat Soviet Russa by taking on 4,000,000 men. They would do it by launching a drop pod right into the Kremlin and popping Stalin's ass and his high command. All accomplished with a single tactical squad of 10 marines.

Although given Aluminiumwolf's scenario I presume killing Gorbachev might have a bigger effect than desecrating Stalin's remains, I very much doubt a squad of +10% Marines would be able to do that, assuming we're talking about a Soviet Union that knows about the concept of drop pods. A squad of ten marines more true to the novels probably could.

@Bladehate

If the setting's baseline military grade weapon does not pose a real threat to a naked PC, then I do see it as a problem. Obviously many here do not, but to me it is an indicator that the game has undergone quite a bit of power creep, specifically since Death Watch.

Actually, it didn't. One of the very first Dark Heresy adventures featured a Deathwatch Marine whose stats were about the same as the "modern" ones. The only difference is that you can now play as one those guys. Part of the grimdarkness of the setting has always been that there are horrors lurking in the galaxy that just won't care about your pathetic lasgun. Now you're playing as them. What was supposed to happen? Should they have dropped in power to artificially make threats out of obstacles that shouldn't be any?

Cifer said:

Whoops, I read 1940 for some reason.

Still, that's what they would do. According to the fluff (I'm talking tabletop fluff, not novels), the average human planet doesn't stand a much higher chance against this tactic than soviet Russa: depending on the technology and training of the opposition, the number of marines required to do do a lightning assault to an (human) enemy HQ might vary from a 10 man squad (modern day technology or lower) to an entire company (Fortress with Imperium level of technology), but they will do it and succeed.

The new True Grit is good.

Keeping in mind, Chaos is POWERFUL, CORRUPTING AND EVIL.

So is True grit overpowered? Hell no!

Your average human who's touched by chaos and gets changed, ends up harder than your loyal Imperium soldier, as he lacks the dark blessing of chaos.

Now take your superhuman Space Marine, chaos the sauce and you have a genetically bred killing machine who's on top of that, touched by the Dark Gods, meaning his constitution is strengthen by Warp forces, making him way more resilliant to damage (or **** right ignore it thanks to Nurgle) than 'simple' genetics can manage to accomplish.

I do not understand the goal of some here to try to either rise a normal human to super-human levels and bring down the genetically modified, hypoindoctrinaded well equipped super-soldier down to 'humane' levels.

Some dude wrote a novel about marines dying by the truck laods to lasgun fire and sharp sticks? Fine, I don't care, that's one dude's point of view, who's surely been 'tainted' by romancing a tale for the sake fo the novel. If you absoutely want to ahve marines being as sucky as any other guardsman, go ahead. I'll base a GAME out of the specific GAME BOOK, not every tinbits of fluff written everywhere, that can easely be contradicted with every other new novels that pops out 2 weeks later.

Your wizard can't use that 2 handed baltle Axe even if you want to? Suck it, you can throw fireballs. Enjoy it and reverere into it. Even if you want to use it, that's what the fighter is for. To each it's own. CSM are killing machines, in town, they will stand out, start trouble, and might end up being a liability for the party, especially if they cannot allow to loose access to said town. That is IF the party agrees to even have him show it's face within city limits.

Marines are specialised ; they fight and win and are second to none in this. Humans are talented : They can do anything they want from every part of the spectrum.

Long story short: It is not unbalanced or super-powerful, it is a in-universe explanation for it; chaos is more powerful as it gives you power NOW instead of having to earn/deserve it after prooving your worth....Of course, with Chaos, if you fail, you fail hard. so sucking up more damage is an off-shoot of being tained by chaos as much as that extra arm of that pair of tentacle growing out form your eyes.