Greetings fellow lackeys of the False Emperor.
In First Founing, it states that Sanguinary Priests get their special ability in addition to the three Apothecary special abilities.
Can this be right? Surely it must be in addition to _one of the three_ Apothecary special abilities?
I run it as RAW because Apothecaries are pretty sad as-written. Hell, I'd let all Apothecaries take all 3. GIves them some interesting and fluffy effects and makes them marginally less than pure boring healbots.
I don't think they get all three. Rather they get the option to choose from the three as normal apothecary does, and still gets the BA specific one in addition.
This is RAW, A Sanguinary priest is an advanced speciality. Advanced specialities require xp to take, so purchasing advanced specialities only occurs in the "spend your XP" phase of character creation which comes after the choose basic specialty and special ability phases of character creation.
Character creation:
Stage 1: generate characteristics
Stage 2: select chapter
Stage 3: select speciality
3rd sub stage of selecting speciality, "Each Speciality has a selection of Special Abilities.
Choose one and note it down on your character sheet."
Stage 4: movement, wounds, fate, and experience points
Last sub stage is when you can use your xp to customize your character
Stage 6: Give character life
Stage 7: play the darn game!
Unless the purchase of the advance specialty retroactively modifies step 3, which is not inconceivable.
I don't see how it could be.
Even using the advanced speciality closest to your speculation, the Space Wolf Scout, we see it even states "Tactical Marines only." So even the wolf scout is a tactical marine, and has a tactical marine special ability although he also gets his scout special ability as well. Yes the characteristic advance table changes, but you can't purchase these advances until you can purchase the scout specialty anyways. None of the advanced specialities, so far, have their own advance scheme for all 8 ranks, you still have your primary speciality no matter what advanced one you chose.
You can only choose an advanced speciality once you get to step 4 of creating a character. This doesn't stop you from creating a character for that speciality, but none of the modifications happen until you can actually pay for them, which occurs in step 4. Once you purchase the speciality anything specifically mentioned to modify or change then occurs. Modification, if any occurs in step 4 when you purchase the advanced specialty, not before.
As applies to the OP issue, Sanguinary priest does not specifically state your apothecary then recieves all of the normal apothecary special abilities, it simply states the priest's special ability is in addition to whatever ability you previously selected.
I agree with Kshatriya. The fact that it actually says that the Sanguinary Priest possesses that specialty's unique special ability in ADDITION to the three from the core book makes me think that, when creating a character, you pick one at stage 3, then get the other two when you enter the advanced specialty. It's a little unclear, but that's how I read it.
I'm tentatively inclining toward giving them all three.
Relatedly, is the -5 Fellowship for Wolf Scouts instead of the +5 that Space Wolves get, or combined? (Resulting in a +0 Fellowship.)
Also, I'm thinking that something got messed up somewhere on the Imperial Fists Squad Mode abilities -- that first one should be Sustained, I think,
Eh, I can see an argument that the SP stuff is written ambiguously or requires you to think about chargen progression. Really what it comes back to for me is an Apothecary having all 3 abilities doesn't come close to braking the game, and the Apothecary specialty can unfortunately turn into a sad sack healbot really easily, so I don't care about giving them a little more oomph and options. Obviously that is only tangentially related to the actual writing of the ability and the RAI/RAW.
If you think there's something wrong with the Imperial Fists, the answer is "everything."