Deathwing game?

That supports my 'standard construction' argument, rather than refuting it

Yes, but it would throw a wench into the idea of the Inquisition not being able to get its hands on it that was mentioned in this thread.

Well, depending on how much one cares about such input from other sources, anyways.

Black Carapace appears to be a neural connector that transmits signals to the suit instantly, making it essentially a second skin, letting you use it without any delay

Or possibly not even that. How much of a delay can there be, compared between intercepting a nerve impulse within the nervous system, and intercepting it near the muscle / reading the muscle reaction itself? Would it even be noticeable at all?

Looking at real life EMG , it even references both surface as well as intramuscular options.

Assuming, of course, that this is how a standard PA interface would work. As far as I know, it's never been described (though if it were, we'd probably only have a dozen different versions of that, so .. meh), and thus it could just as well be as primitive as a series of tiny levers and buttons built into a metal endoskeleton, where the "padding" of skin and flesh of the operator would affect reaction times.

For the moment, I'm gravitating towards the interpretation that the Black Carapace essentially functions as a built-in "translator" allowing the Space Marine to operate any suit of power armour immediately, whereas anyone attempting to interface with a suit of PA normally would require the suit to be calibrated to them / the unique pattern and strength of their body impulses, so that the armour replicates the movements of the wearer as best as possible rather than exerting too much or too little strength. (in addition, the Black Carapace also comes with additional advantages as detailed in the Index Astartes article already mentioned by Cail)

Though, I have to admit, the "countless tiny levers and buttons" also sounds kind of 40k'ish in its backwardness.

Ultimately, as far as catching and transmitting information goes, a Black Carapace could also be said to just be another form of MIU ... similar to what allows any Techpriest to move their mechadendrites, perhaps.

In a way, it's an interesting topic to speculate about.

Honestly, if I could, I would just replace GW with FFG fluff writers. In my opinion they've done far more enjoyable and immersive lore then GW ever has.

As a fan of the SoB, I'm not sure I can agree with that assessment.

FFG is obligated to create a more logical, internally coherent universe than GW simply by virtue of the nature of RPGs and the level of detail that they have to get into.

You are implying that FFG's interpretation of the setting is indeed "more logical and internally coherent" than GW's.

Not everyone might agree with this assumption.

Perhaps more than that, though, it is also a question of themes and style. For example, I for one can do without D&D style "divine magic" in 40k, or the drastically increased gap between Astartes and "normal" humans. This interpretation of the 41st millennium is quite a bit more fantastical than GW's - whether or not this is preferred is something that every gamer will have to decide for themselves, though. It comes down to a matter of taste.

I'm struggling to see how "To me this has always been the rationale for why the big I can equip a space marine chapter without being able to give its agents the same level of gear, like Lynata said." means they can't acquire the weapons. It seems to me that I said exactly the opposite, that they can get hold of the equipment, give it to a chapter but are unable to utilise it on regular people.

With the SoB armour I was trying to make a series of points as to why it would be unlikely that the Inquisition would have the stuff in spades. Obviously exceptions exist and in a setting like 40k it would turn every conversation of this type into an exercise in futility to try and list every one of them before a point could be qualified. I mean really? The focus was meant to be that it didn't require the same genetic modification as the SM equivilent, but is still not a readily available piece of kit .

So yeah, cool. Lets go with that then. All female characters can have power armour with infinite power supplies , because more neckbeards playing mary-sue's is exactly what we need

A male player in a group got some sororitas power armor, got rid of the boobplate bit and put a flat piece of ceramite in it's place.

A male player in a group got some sororitas power armor, got rid of the boobplate bit and put a flat piece of ceramite in it's place.

This is a massive missed opportunity for the dude in the chainmaille bikini in space. 'You can have PA, you just gotta be a transvestite'

I'm struggling to see how "To me this has always been the rationale for why the big I can equip a space marine chapter without being able to give its agents the same level of gear, like Lynata said." means they can't acquire the weapons. It seems to me that I said exactly the opposite, that they can get hold of the equipment, give it to a chapter but are unable to utilise it on regular people.

My comment was a reply to your reply concerning the availability of SoB power armour.

If FFG had left the number of Battle Sisters in the Calixis sector similar to how they were in the Inquisitor's Handbook (~50), then sure, one could say it's rare stuff. But considering how Blood of Martyrs retconned and centuplicated these numbers ... it does become a bit harder to justify, strictly speaking from a perspective of internal consistency.

It also boils down to how much we actually think the Inquisition is able to influence the various Imperial Adepta, though. As I've mentioned before, I'm under the impression that the big I is a lot less impressive in Dark Heresy than it is in GW's own material. It doesn't control the Deathwatch, seems to have not even a theoretical sway over the Space Marines and the Adeptus Mechanicus, and it has way more Inquisitors, with each Inquisitor further appointing dozens, if not hundreds of Acolytes, who are running around doing their own stuff.

In short, it feels as if the Inquisition got "watered down" quite a bit, but that's just what I got out of reading the various books.

Which would then at least explain why the Inquisition is not even able to procure Marine-level gear they ought to be able to use themselves. Why is the Inquisition's Terminator armour less protective, for example? What about other esoteric gear such as force fields? Flamers and plasma weapons? You can't explain everything with size or recoil alone (assuming bolt weapons would actually have much recoil, given their two-stage firing mechanism).

At some point, it just gets easier to assume that the Inquisition just isn't all that powerful in this game.

The Inquisition has inferior gear to the Space Marines because they don't follow the creed of Our Spiritual Liege, Matt Wa- I mean, Roboute Guilliman.

It is more logical and internally coherent.

It has to be, because it is required to have many more rules about many more things, all of which have to be examined in much greater detail and granularity, and all of which have to be brought into coherence with each other.

GW can, say, talk about various kinds of power armour and one time they can do this, and the other time that, and it doesn't matter, because there are no rules for them, nothing that says, "Blue Power Armour does such and such and compares in such and such strictly quantified ways with Green Power Armour." All power armour is identical at this level of granularity (3+ armour save; that's it). FFG, however, cannot do that because the differences between Blue and Green Power Armour have been specified at a comparatively high level.

Didn't stop Deathwatch from having all 8 marks of Astartes power armor, each with their own separate rules, AND Terminator armor. And that's not even getting into the "lesser" power armors.

Didn't stop Deathwatch from having all 8 marks of Astartes power armor, each with their own separate rules, AND Terminator armor. And that's not even getting into the "lesser" power armors.

That's what I said. At the level of detail of an RPG, such differences become important, whereas at the level of the TT wargame there is no functional difference between Mk 6 and 7.

You sound like GW never made a d100 game themselves.

Also, what does the setting have to do with rules? The former can be represented in the latter, but that doesn't have to do anything with logic or consistency. These things are solely matters of background.

... unless ... actually, I suppose I would be up for a debate about the "logic" in some of FFG's rules, such as the Soak Fire Squad Mode allowing a team of Space Marines to completely negate one of them being hit by a lascannon blast.

And let's not even talk about consistency between the rules when they change evolve all the time and are, by nature of the company's approach to this project, different for every single game.

I was thinking more about the background, though. Most of what I dislike is merely due to first having learned it differently from GW, so that is admittedly not a viable ground for such a debate, and many "problems" can be avoided simply by ignoring and dismissing various corner points of the original background. After all, why not give the Deathwatch - in this version of the setting controlled not by the Inquisition but solely by Space Marines - a fleet of automated and cloaked warships capable of planetary destruction, if, in FFG's setting, Guilliman and the Imperial Senate never saw the need to severely limit the Astartes' strike capability after the Horus Heresy?

However, there are some things that just don't sound very logical or coherent even when looked at in an isolated manner. The game's approach to divine magic springs to mind, seemingly only available to humans believing either in the Imperial Creed or the Machine God, yet absent from any other culture (human or xeno) so far. Do they really wish to portray the Emperor as the only true god of the setting?

And let's not forget various retcons that happened after FFG took over from Black Industries, invalidating parts of earlier books. Though those earlier books certainly had weird parts already, such as implying that anyone but a Space Marine was fighting with "civilian" weapons.

I said "internally coherent." One thing cannot contradict another thing, and neither can contradict the rules.

But actually now that you mention it, Space Marines using different weapons from other people is one of the places where it is more coherent, probably obligated to by a pretty elementary thought process. Big thing --> big gun --> large caliber.

Bolters are .75 caliber in both normal and Astartes versions. I think the difference between the two is length of the cartridge and round, and subsequently the amount of explosives packed into the bullet. Mind you, however, if a normal human can fire a heavy bolter from the hip with sufficient strength and training, I see no reason why they shouldn't be able to do the same with an Astartes bolt rifle or pistol. (Astartes heavy bolters will probably be completely unusuable by normal humans without some kind of mounting, no matter how strong you are.) And yet, under the rules-as-written, assault cannons can also be used by unaugmented humans standing up, Hollywood-style.

And of course, the Emperor is not the only "true god" of the setting. While I believe faith talents are rather stupid, they do also provide rules of boons of the Dark Gods, especially in Black Crusade, which focuses on Chaos rather than the Imperium; Black Crusade also repeatedly refers to the Big E as "the Corpse God" or "the False Emperor". And just ask the Orks how their guns work, even when they shouldn't, or how their sense of fear suddenly disappears when they're in a big enough mob. Considering that the other races are either atheistic (Tau, Tyranids, Necrons, Dark Eldar) or whose gods are mostly dead (Eldar), of course the Emperor is going to be given a disproportionate amount of focus. I wonder how Eldar gods (what little that remain, at least) would affect an Aspect Warrior's abilities or a Farseer's power.

Speaking of which, give us an Ork or Eldar RPG already, FFG! Some of us want to play something other than a human from time to time!

Mind you, however, if a normal human can fire a heavy bolter from the hip with sufficient strength and training, I see no reason why they shouldn't be able to do the same with an Astartes bolt rifle or pistol.

He can. Astartes weapons count as one size category larger and have a -20 to hit, but he can use them.

I said "internally coherent."

Which is why I've already dropped the parts that "just" contradict GW's take on the setting.

However, as I've mentioned above, there are enough cases where Dark Heresy contradicts itself, both in the fluff as well as the rules.

But actually now that you mention it, Space Marines using different weapons from other people is one of the places where it is more coherent, probably obligated to by a pretty elementary thought process. Big thing --> big gun --> large caliber.

Calibre .75 isn't that big, actually, and identical to what Dark Heresy has given to "mortals". If FFG had wanted to give the Space Marines a bullet that cannot feasibly be shot by non-Astartes, perhaps they should have described it as such, rather than just slapping a lame rule on it that doesn't even care how strong or big you are, but looks only for whether or not your character has that "Space Marine" tag on the character sheet.

Mind you, however, if a normal human can fire a heavy bolter from the hip with sufficient strength and training, I see no reason why they shouldn't be able to do the same with an Astartes bolt rifle or pistol.

In fact, there is the Angelus bolter in Dark Heresy, which supposedly lets you shoot Astartes rounds with no problem.

Then again, they only do 2d10 damage... Another example for "internal coherence", I suppose.

And of course, the Emperor is not the only "true god" of the setting. While I believe faith talents are rather stupid, they do also provide rules of boons of the Dark Gods, especially in Black Crusade, which focuses on Chaos rather than the Imperium; Black Crusade also repeatedly refers to the Big E as "the Corpse God" or "the False Emperor".

Is the Chaos stuff not explicitly described as Warp Sorcery, however?

This is syncronic, not diachronic, coherence (ooo look big words). Yes we are all aware that the Astartes weapon damages have changed twice.

Are space marines larger than people? Yes

Do space marines appear to use guns scaled to their size? Yes

Are guns that are different sizes in fact different guns? Yes

Conclusion: Space Marines use different guns.

Oh, are only specific kinds of inconsistency admitted to this debate? I'm sorry, perhaps you should have specified this earlier, rather than laying the foundation for an insult. Now point out where exactly GW is being "synchronously incoherent", please.

Do space marines appear to use guns scaled to their size? Yes

Do these guns have barrels scaled to Space Marine size? No

This is syncronic, not diachronic, coherence (ooo look big words). Yes we are all aware that the Astartes weapon damages have changed twice.

Are space marines larger than people? Yes

Do space marines appear to use guns scaled to their size? Yes

Are guns that are different sizes in fact different guns? Yes

Conclusion: Space Marines use different guns.

They use different guns in the same way a SCAR-H is a different gun from a SCAR-L. The mechanism and design is the same, the only difference between the two is the round they fire. The SCAR-H fires 7.62x51mm, a high-powered battle rifle round, while the SCAR-L fires 5.56x45mm, an intermediate round designed for assault rifles. They're both SCARs. Or if you want a more extreme example, compare the G3 rifle with the MP5 submachine gun. Similar mechanism, though the difference in scale is largely because of the rounds they fire (7.62x51mm and 9x19mm respectively).

The mechanism and design is the same, the only difference between the two is the round they fire.

Well, potentially different. I've seen some people arguing with pictures of super-long anti-materiel rifle rounds to explain away the 25% damage bonus in comparison to the civilian/mortal variant, which might be a viable explanation ... were it not that the resulting round would become so ridiculously long that either Space Marine boltguns or the civilian/mortal version would have to look considerably different in terms of the magazine.

It also doesn't explain why exactly the Inquisition does not use the exact same round, considering the two-stage firing mechanism and the result the sheer weight of the gun would have on potential recoil, even leaving aside the possible existence of other recoil compensating technology such as blast compensators, springs or counterweights. Actually, given that one gun in Dark Heresy, humans don't seem to have much of a problem shooting Astartes rounds at all ... they just don't generally do it. I'd be curious about the explanation for this.

Aside from that, Space Marines don't have the monopoly on "big and burly". Which just makes the "Man's Reach" rule seem extremely arbitrary rather than being born out of any consideration for the background.

... especially considering the damage Astartes guns had in Dark Heresy first before being buffed, when someone noticed that SM and CSM couldn't reliably harm each other with their most preferred weapon thanks to Unnatural Toughness.

Spiritual Liege, Marines R best, etc. etc. On the tabletop, Marine bolters are no different from 'mortal' ones, yet in the RPGs, a Marine bolt pistol is stronger than a human heavy bolter.

Well, not in GW's d100 Inquisitor game.

Fits better to the original fluff that way, anyways.

A lot of stuff is just different in Dark Heresy, etc, but I suppose it could have at least been made somewhat more obvious. A "proper" explanation, if you will. It's not just bolters, after all, the Marines get this damage boost on any of their guns.

Thinking about it, I vaguely recall the Dark Heresy core rulebook hinting at Astartes equipment just being on a whole different techlevel, which at least sounds somewhat more plausible than just pointing at the size differences (whilst still saying they use the exact same calibre) - although I for one still have a problem with the Inquisition supposedly not having access to this gear ... aside from illegal black market stuff like the cobbled-together Angelus.

Funny thing: The human heavy bolter is larger and heavier than an Astartes boltgun, and has a 25% larger calibre, but still does less damage.

It's the same caliber, but it's probably the difference between 7.62x39mm and 7.62x51mm. They're both .30 caliber rounds, but the difference between them is that one of them is an intermediate round for assault rifles (originally designed for the SKS carbine and AK-47) and the other is a high-power battle rifle round. There's more powder behind one of them, and in return for its greater power, it has greater recoil. Incidentally, the 7.62x51mm round is extremely difficult to control in full-auto fire unless you're using a bipod-mounted weapon such as an M60 or FN MAG, whereas an AK can be fired standing up.

Note how the Angelus bolter is a single-shot sniper rifle instead of being an automatic battle rifle like an Astartes bolter; humans would probably find Astartes rounds to be extremely difficult to control, so while the Inquisition could potentially get their hands on such things, they'd be too powerful to be practical. That, and there's a huge religious taboo against anyone but Marines handling Marine weapons, which is probably the real reason.

Yet bolt weapons are effectively miniature missiles, and the rocket motor does not ignite until the projectile has cleared the barrel. But even if we assume that the first stage propellant really has that much kick to it, and further assume that the heavy weight of the gun is not enough to make it more controllable, and further assume that the FFG version of the boltgun lacks both real life as well as GW-40k recoil compensation technology ... don't you agree this could, or rather should , simply be resolved by a simple Strength requirement?

The Inquisitor's Handbook already offers a bolt pistol that imposes a BS penalty when fired below a certain level of Strength, so there is a precedent for such an option. Instead, it is now suggested that, apparently, none of the Imperial organisations ever thought of replicating the wargear issued to every new Astartes Chapter, even with the option of mounting it on vehicles. It would not even be a "Marine weapon" - but simply a weapon using similar rounds (like the Godwyn-De'az in GW's own version of the setting). Or are we to believe the Imperium is deliberately gimping itself, because anything beyond a certain "power level" is reserved for the Astartes? (an idea rejected by Ascension, if you'd look at the Vindicare's weaponry)

And then there is still the matter of a cal 1.00 heavy bolter on full auto apparently not being a problem even if you're Strength 20 or something, yet the idea that cal 0.75 Astartes rounds would rip people's arms right off (hyperbole).

That being said, perhaps I'm still projecting too much of the original background onto this discussion. And perhaps it is a futile effort in general to challenge game mechanics born out of a simple (re)balancing effort with common sense.

Gnnh... I must apologise - this is just one of the topics that keeps grinding my gears. I know it's no use getting worked up over it, but I feel a lot of potential has been wasted here, so I continue to feel a sense of loss.