Just wanted to know since one of my players who is playing an acopethery wanted to trade in his grenades, bolter to max out on gear such as healing gear( drugs and consumables) but just have his bolter pistol , chainsword and clips to go with. How much of this can he carry even if he can.(he wants to be a mobile pharmacy)

Most Astartes have a carry limit of over 1000 kg, given their Unnatural stats. Being overloaded is not a big concern for them.

Most stuff on the power armor I imagine is magnetized. But art has depicted belts and harnesses for grenades and extra magazines.

Side note: the combat webbing war gear from Rites of Bttle IMO is pretty terrible as it caused a problem that did not exist without its own existence (colloquially referred to as an Air-Breathing Mermaid issue).

Also the Narthecium is the only healing gear he will really need. Armor comes preloaded with an amount of stims that resist Fatigue for a certain period of combat time. The other drugs are just OK and are overcosted for what they do. More repair cement is always handy though. Being the healer is cool but if he gives up a lot of weapons he may find himself ineffective or bored in combat. In-combat healing is a really tricky thing as it takes a Full Action and most wounded Astartes (or at least my players) spend Fate to heal if it's really bad and then act to end the combat ASAP so the Apothecary can heal in narrative time.

Kshatriya said:

Agreed. For Astartes the only thing they would need would be a Narthecium/ Reductor (to retrieve geneseed). Other equipment you could consider would be a Vivisection gauge for the techmarine/ apothecary to work on servitors, Perhaps a diagnoster helmet too. However, the more senior in rank are well versed with the physical examination of other species including humans.

IMO I would provide a Apo with a small set of apparatus that can measure trace elements in air/ water for infection/ radiation. I would also allow the Narthecium by linking it with another piece of tech which analyses bio samples. Such would allow him to manufacture toxins, or vaccines on the fly.

If the devastator could have a spare ammo pack, I do not see why the Apo cannot have a kit that provides him access to medical equipment. House rule a pack if it does not exist. Like Kshatriya mentioned, perhaps such kit could be mag-locked to Apo's armour.

I always felt that Apothecaries do more than just maintain a chapter's geneseed purity. In the Deathwatch, they also study the physique of Xenos species, which makes them especially useful in formulating toxins to fight enemy Xenos or know where in the anatomy to hit the enemy at. He should not only know how to combat the Xenos but also be adequately equipped to take the fight to the enemies.

I personally like the combat webbing, it is modular and can be modified to suit your purpose, and most of the artwork I've seen (and SM models) show them with just minimal gear for combat (which IIR Imperial Armor states is 3 clips and not much more, which is odd, but so is the specialty progression of Marines in general ). It's only 3 req, but if you feel the Apothecary is short changed (many of us do) then give it or something similar to him as standard issue.

I agree though the drugs tend to only be okay as to work on enemies they require things like failed tougness checks, so unless it's a human or tau they tend not to work on them. Genophage is kind of cool, and to be honest making it is what I'd expect my apothecary to do. I really like Deepstriker's notion about tools to scan local water and air for microbes and the like- the chapter biologist if you will. And provided ample time is given, I'd also let the Narthecium be kind of a mobile mini-lab as he suggests.

The main trick I see with this is not that the Apothecary would become a 'walking pharmacy' or having extra kit, it's as GMs when there is an apothecary on the field we need to keep in mind that he's there and give him his moments. If we build adventures around nothing but shooting the enemy and healing the marines that get hurt when the enemy fires back, the Apothecary won't have room to play. Build in time in the adventure or at least take into consideration the skills the Apothecary has and think of ways that the use of those could help the team out. You could really find a use for this, I think, versus Tyranids (obviously) and Chaos (fluff indicates in some instances that medicine and the like is used to detect and treat Chaos 'infections').

Charmander said:

That's fine. I personally think the webbing is crap, since there was no easy-access problem before the webbing itself came along and invented it. I can see it as a thing that should be built in to scout armor and be obviated by the tech inherent to true power armor.

Apoths should have gotten the Create Toxins ability for free, IMO, and then picked between the +healing and -CP. It'd give them some kind of combat boost at least, which they sorely need. FWIW I've never seen anyone take the "remove CP" option. +1d5 healing is pretty nice and the Apoth of my group has rolled a LOT of 5s. I'd say the Diagnosticator Helm could work as a scaled-down auspex; it's designed as medical gear so it should be able to detect toxins in the air or water, for example, but not like trace amounts or radiation or gases that pose no medical threat (that'd also step on the toes of a real auspex a lot).

I have to disagree about your assessment of the Apothecary's role. In the game I run, one player is a BA Apoth, who recently got retconned into Sanguinary Priest with the release of FF. He's a great player and not afraid to get down and dirty. Whenever they find bodies he usually performs a quick field autopsy to determine cause of death and this has more than once given them hints on the enemies to come. He's screened small populations for genestealer infection, and the mere threat of screening has exposed the infected and allowed them to be purged. For a couple missions he carried a heavy flamer and just doused hordes with it then slammed nid elites in melee, making great use of Assassin Strike to minimize their ability to bring 3-4 attacks to bear on him. He took Signature Wargear with an Exceptional storm bolter the second they hit Respected renown and has been alternating between blowing through vespid hordes and hamstringing krootox in the current mission. So Apoths can have great screen time in combat, but they won't be optimum; they just have to be built right. I do agree that giving them other things to do besides be the healbot is important, and I do think they need some degree of combat buffing.

Kshatriya said:

I can see it absolutely integrated into scout armor, not a bad idea. A similar question to this thread came up in my games though- just where do Astartes put all the extra junk the req- the dataslates, the 15 grenades the req'd, the two extra pistols they wanted to carry, the 'unlimited' (or otherwise) ammunition that they carried? Magnetized to the armor, to some of us, just feels silly due to it's bulk and imagry. I can totaly see the 'just don't worry about it' route, my players didn't like the idea of just pulling things out of thin air.

Kshatriya said:

I like this idea quite a bit, actually. As for reducing CPs, you'd have to be playing a campaign where you knew that you were going to encounter a lot of chaos exposure to make it worth the while, and even then I'm not sure if what you remove is enough to justify it :-P

Kshatriya said:

Isn't the above an example of you planning your adventures in that way? A lot of adventures and GMs throw thier players into kown situations- head in to assassinate the Tau commander, seek out the Tyranid Synapse creature to name a couple of cliche's. The fact that the autopsy really helps much is because the players don't go in having intel that tells them what they're going to be coming across. I'm not saying this is bad, in fact I think it's illustrating how you can build things so the Apothecary's skills are more than just a healing potion that takes a full turn to use.

Kshatriya said:

Here I can't disagree, that's a perfect use of the abilities that my group wished they had when playing Price of Hubris, but again, it's a pretty specialized situation that can also be resolved with a Librarian with reading.

Kshatriya said:

Well, having them need to be 'built right', including picking things like the Blood Angel Chapter to be able to not be middling at best in hand to hand is where I see the problem. Anyone can get that Sig Wargear or heavy flamer and probably be better at it to boot with access to things like cleanse and purify or cheaper BS. If they dump points into intel to be the best at their role they'll end up sacrificing BS or WS, which will make them kind of middling there. If they're not a BA, they won't get Assassin Strike.

In the world of unrelenting devestation, force domes and smites, sharing squad mode abilities, jump packs and multiple attacks, and being a Terminator outside of Terminator Armor, the Apothecary just isn't over the top enough to be as attractive to many. Personally I'm trying out AK's Apothecary Thread additional talents. We'll see how it goes, though the guy I have playing the apothecary is pretty into it regardless, and for the most part it's up to me to make sure he gets his 5th of the spotlight.

End derailment- Use combat webbing if you want an excuse to carry things outside of magnetizing canisters all over your kit, or give them a messenger bag. Alternatey add a couple of tubes onto the Narthecium pack. Alternatley just don't worry about what they carry so long as it feels reasonable

To help with some clarification if you go by the novels instead of just the RPG books for Deathwatch, the grenades carried by marines are typically in a dispenser attached to the belt, most of the gear is mag-locked to the armor or storage compartments on the belt, and there are attachments for the backpack generators that serve to assist in carrying other supplies, such as missiles for launchers, extended ammo packs/belts, gear holders, servo-harnesses, etc. Also, if you look at some of the modeling that they have for Apothecaries and such on the models, not just in the artwork, they often appear with a more advanced backpack that has lights/sensors/etc. There are even some backpack power supplies with miniature shrines built into them or swords strapped to them.

I like the idea of the diagnosticator. I'll probably use that as a house rule if the apothecary in my group ever decides to get one, or even asks about it.

I can see it absolutely integrated into scout armor, not a bad idea. A similar question to this thread came up in my games though- just where do Astartes put all the extra junk the req- the dataslates, the 15 grenades the req'd, the two extra pistols they wanted to carry, the 'unlimited' (or otherwise) ammunition that they carried? Magnetized to the armor, to some of us, just feels silly due to it's bulk and imagry. I can totaly see the 'just don't worry about it' route, my players didn't like the idea of just pulling things out of thin air.

Honestly troops today carry this many grenades through a plate carrier vest designed to hold that many grenades. And I'd think a Space marine would do something similar where they'd either have small magnetic attachments hooked onto the exterior of the armor, or some sort of satchel or bag that would be worn to hold all the additional supplies. Typically this isn't well represented in the art designs for the troops as they're intimidating as larger smooth lean lumbering hulks. Similarly though the design in Halo had clean look armor with no distinction as to where the ammo or grenades were stored. With the release of Halo Reach we saw the addition of combat webbings in various formats to be able to distinguish how they hold the ammo and carry the weapons.

Not that Halo is a good analog to WH40K (WH40K being superior in every regard) the idea would be similar in my opinion. As would be the addition of that combat webbing. I did have the combat webbing as an available option to the add-ons the scout marine specialty could have by default for the Scout Marine specialty doc I wrote (link can be seen in my signature). Though having it as default to the scout armor seems mildly excessive as it is an optional item.

just wanted to intrude briefly to say that the comment: "not that Halo is a good analogy to wh40k (wh40k being superior in every regard)" is priceless!

Oh, and i never really liked the whole 'mini grenade belt dispenser' deal (from the space wolf books?): a bit lamesauce for my liking (especially since a lotta old minies sport obvious grenades on their belts...3 or 6, can't remember how many...). Give the marines a man-purse...er, I mean a satchel, like Indiana Jones...

thx guys. I will consider your ideas for my next campaigns.

I have often thought that the problem with micro-grenade dispensers is that you could shoot the grenades out of guns.