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I'm curious. Has anyone else tried to create and use honest to goodness space marines in Dark Heresy as player characters? Is there any real interest in it? If you've done it what rules did you use and what were your experiences with it?

I was cruising through the Dark Reign website looking for ideas and just the odd bitz that people had come up when I stumbled across two different sets of rules for genuine Space Marine characters in DH. I'd thought about it but I'd never gone ahead and pursued the idea because the idea of cooking up the necessary career paths, stats, and all the other odds and ends would be a huge task. Thankfully not everyone is as lazy as me. Of the two rule sets one appeared to be geared towards trying to shoehorn a Space Marine into an existing group of acolytes. Not a huge fan of that set, it left the marine just not feeling like a marine so much as a big strong guy with over the top kit. (Yeah I know, not THAT far from the truth but whatever.) The second was much more complete, pretty, and didn't pull too many punches with the marines. It got my creative juices flowing and I put it to my group if they'd like to give it a go. They said yes.

So we got into the nuts and bolts of creating characters and getting things ready to go. First disclaimer, the rules set ( Here Tyranid Conclave: Adeptus Astartes ) is pretty good for the most part. The most part. There are more than a few questionable choices or obvious omissions. The first comes with melee weapons. Until you get deep, VERY deep, into the career tree you can't get anything beyond simple primitive melee weapons. I guess they never saw a scout with a chainsword. Second, the progression is off in several spots letting you get power weapons before chain. For instance in the apothecary path you get chain weapons and power weapons on the same level, but power weapons are only 100 XP and chain 300 XP. Yeah. Another glaring bug is that assault marines can't carry plasma pistols, ever. I strongly suspect that the actual testing of the character creation system was rather lax. Finally, they simply ported over most of the DH weapons to the Astartes (something the first rules set wisely didn't do.) Weapons that seem underpowered in regular DH are positively BB guns in the hands of an Astartes with 12 armor on their chest and 8 to 12 toughness. Before play even started I wadded the entire weapons table up and threw it out, making my own table up to give the Astartes weapons appropriate punch and allow them to actual injure someone if they ever square off against traitor marines. Now it's not all doom and gloom with the rules. 95% of the character creation and advancement is fine. It's got rules for purity seals, a nice big section of fluff about many of the larger chapters, and even separate progression paths for the Space Wolves and Iron Hands. It covers most of the original Legions/Chapters and their quirks. It even has a nice big section for Space Marine vehicles.

After that we got going. The PC group is a Deathwatch Kill Team. Seemed the simplest way to allow the players to select their chapter at will yet have them in the same group. Started off at 7,000 XP to let everyone get into their specialties instead of slogging up through scouts and such. The first mission is the assassination of some ork warbosses to prevent the formation of a WAAAGH!!!. It should follow on to why the orks suddenly advanced as a Tau plot to destabilize both races in the area. So I've had to come up with orks and stats and I'll be having to start making Tau ones shortly too. The game is going alright if a bit slow. The first encounter is showing the weapons to be appropriately lethal. One lucky hit or two average heavy bolter hits killing regular boyz. I'll keep this updated as the game progresses.

I haven't actually tried it but my finding out about those same rules you tried out was caused by one of my players asking about the possibility of a space marine game. There are some problems with the paths, but it's easy enough to fix (chain sooner and cheaper than power, as you said...).

Deathwatch kill team seems the best way to go to have them fit into the Dark Heresy context, but I wouldn't even try to have a space marine into a regular acolyte group. There's a reason why Inquisitor can't take Space Marines in their retinue. Come to think of it a small group of Grey Knights could be tons of fun, too.

Weapons definitely need to be improved however. It specifically says that the bolters available to Acolytes in Dark Heresy are smaller versions of the ones used by the Marines.

In the Inquisitor's Handbook, there's a bolt pistol based on the Godwyn pattern used by the Sisters of Battle and it requires 40 Strenght or the recoil gives you a penalty. And that's -based- on a -SoB- pattern.. so we're still pretty far from a genuine Marine-issue Bolt Pistol!

All in all, definitely a great attempt, but there's things to fix. I certainly intend to try it out once our current campaign is more advanced and we feel like taking a break from it.

Aren't you concerned about character depth? Seems that space marines (hur) wouldn't offer as much from a roleplaying standpoint. That's not to say that I wouldn't enjoy a few games striding the battlefield like a god, but when the answer to every problem is "bolter" it feels like it might get a little tired....

I disagree about character depth in a space marine game, particularly a xenos kill team. The marines come from different chapters and have slightly different outlooks on imperial creed etc. Not to mention they are still somewhat human just highly disciplined. There could be rivalry amongst the team but once it's go time they put it aside for the sake of the mission. I imagine the Blood Angel and Space wolf guys are gonna give the ol' rainbow warrior a bit of a ribbing when time permits.

InquisitorBob wrote:I haven't actually tried it but my finding out about those same rules you tried out was caused by one of my players asking about the possibility of a space marine game. There are some problems with the paths, but it's easy enough to fix (chain sooner and cheaper than power, as you said...).

The big thing I'd tell you is to have everyone make their characters and voice any issues they encounter to you. I'm sure my guys missed a few things themselves. Just be ready to make some rulings on the fly to fix things. Don't everyone expect to bring their characters to the table and just go without a little tweaking.

Deathwatch kill team seems the best way to go to have them fit into the Dark Heresy context, but I wouldn't even try to have a space marine into a regular acolyte group. There's a reason why Inquisitor can't take Space Marines in their retinue. Come to think of it a small group of Grey Knights could be tons of fun, too.

They recommended the space marine maybe getting half XP if he's in an acolyte group. I honestly don't think even that will make them work in the context of all the kit they get and natural bonuses they have. The Grey Knights is kind of intriguing but after reading the Grey Knights books I dunno if I'd want to RP them.
"You have some down time as the ship travels what wil..."
"We pray."
"Yeah, same as the last fifty times."

Weapons definitely need to be improved however. It specifically says that the bolters available to Acolytes in Dark Heresy are smaller versions of the ones used by the Marines.

In the Inquisitor's Handbook, there's a bolt pistol based on the Godwyn pattern used by the Sisters of Battle and it requires 40 Strenght or the recoil gives you a penalty. And that's -based- on a -SoB- pattern.. so we're still pretty far from a genuine Marine-issue Bolt Pistol!

Precisely. The IH also has the Angelus pattern bolt carbine that it says uses Space Marine bolts but it's still just 2d10X with 4 Pen. Average damage is exactly the same as the standard DH boltgun. I'll post up my weapon's balancing rationale and the weapon table I came up with at the end of this.

robertsjf wrote:Aren't you concerned about character depth? Seems that space marines (hur) wouldn't offer as much from a roleplaying standpoint. That's not to say that I wouldn't enjoy a few games striding the battlefield like a god, but when the answer to every problem is "bolter" it feels like it might get a little tired....

Well first off I'm not getting where the 1D thing comes from. Space Marines have been shown on many occasions to have quite a bit of depth to them. Yes, they have a role they are intended for but they have some depth to them. Now, if it was all the same chapter on some normal mission yeah it could maybe get stale. That's why it's a DW kill team. How well do you think our Codex quoting Ultramarine is getting along with our Space Wolves?

joe_momma wrote:I disagree about character depth in a space marine game, particularly a xenos kill team. The marines come from different chapters and have slightly different outlooks on imperial creed etc. Not to mention they are still somewhat human just highly disciplined. There could be rivalry amongst the team but once it's go time they put it aside for the sake of the mission. I imagine the Blood Angel and Space wolf guys are gonna give the ol' rainbow warrior a bit of a ribbing when time permits.

Precisely. On the field they're killing machines but when they aren't shooting people they're still characters. There will be conflict within the party. Being on a DW team also gives plenty of chances for a GM to put them into situations where killing might not be the answer, or even the wrong answer entirely.

----------------------

Weapon Balancing Rationale

First off, we have to remember that Astartes weapons (SM) are already stated to be much larger and in general better than the equivalents in the DH book. My goal in all this is to balance the weapons to what is seen in the fiction for SM weapons.

So first off our test subjects. Joe the standard human, 10 wounds, 2 toughness, 0 armor. Bob the standard space marine, 18 wounds, 10 toughness, 12 armor (chest). DH boltgun, 1d10+5X 4 Pen. Death is considered to be -8 wounds. There is sort of a gray area where some of the -7 and -8 wounds damage with a chance to kill, some kill outright, etc. In general if they aren't killed outright at -8 wounds they at least are damaged enough that unless they get medical treatment they'll die.

Now first off we need to talk about weapon damage. The DH boltgun averages 10-11 damage (10.5 if you want to get technical about it) with a min of 6 and a max of 15. It has 4 penetration. With average damage (11) a normal unarmored human will still have 1 wound left. Mind you he just took this round full in the chest with no armor and he survives. With max damage the target is reduced to -3 wounds. Max damage from a bolter on an unarmored human will usually only leave them stunned and fatigued. That's... really unimpressive for what should be one of the most powerful guns you can get before getting into the heavy artillery. Guess what, it wouldn't even phase a space marine. There's literally no point in even bothering to find out what happens when someone fires a DH boltgun at a space marine. It's not going to hurt him, even a head shot.

Now we go to the rules set we're using (mostly). Their SM boltgun is 2d10X with 4 Pen. The average damage is 11, minimum 2 (wtf?) with a max of 20 now. Penetration is still 4. What happens vs. and unarmored human? Well amazingly enough on an average shot exactly the same thing. Joe the human is at 1 wound and general unaffected. An Astartes bolt right to the chest or head and he just shrugs and walks off under the DH rules. A standard human. Unarmored. Now what happens when we max it out to 20 damage? He dies, barely. A perfect max damage SM boltgun shot, a 1 in a 100 damage roll mind you, will just barely kill standard unarmored human. 99% of the time a regular human can take an Astartes bolt to the chest and survive, mostly. On the higer damage rolls, 17, 18, 19, he'll be pretty fethed up but not dead. Space marine? Average shot is the same, it makes it through the SM's armor but doesn't do any damage. Max damage? It drops the SM by 2 wounds. That's at 20 damage. At 18 and below it does no damage at all to the SM (with a chest shot, 16 and less to the head and its no damage). I'd have to run the odds to get an exact number but by the rules you're looking at about an 85% chance that a bolter hit to a SM isn't going to even cause so much as a single wound.

Now, in the fiction what happens? Well first off a hit to a human with a SM bolter is pretty much instant death. Hell a hit with a regular bolter is pretty much instant death. In Brothers of the Snake traitor marines died to one to two bursts of a SM bolter. So call it 3 to 5 bolter hits were lethal. Using my example marine that means you were doing about 23 damage to the marine in 3 to 5 hits, so you were doing 5 to 8 damage per hit. That's where I get my base line for damage. One hit is instant death to an unarmored human. 3 to 5 solid hits should kill a SM.

So what did I get for a SM bolter? 2d10+5X with 5 Pen. So the average damage is 16 with 5 Pen. Minimum is 7 with a max of 25. Our regular human is reduced to -4 wounds on an average hit. Wounded, but alive. You'd need an above average shot of 20 damage to get the instant kill on a regular human. Space Marine? Well the average hit does... nothing to the chest. A hit to the head will do a single wound of damage. So at least our average hit MIGHT hurt a space marine. At full damage you'll do 8 wounds to the chest, 9 to a limb, or 10 to the head. It'd take about 3 of those to doom our average marine. An average roll or less does little to nothing, a slight above average can start to wound a SM. Now personally I'm not wild about not being able to outright vape a regular human but on the upper end it can do it and it can wound a space marine. On the whole I'm happy with that damage. Not quite as deadly as the books but almost.

With the bolter's damage set I started to scale off it. The boltpistol does the same damage but at a reduced range. I'm pondering reducing the Pen a bit to 4. The heavy bolter gets a bit more damage along with more range and a slight increase in Pen. The sniper rifle is a single shot boltgun, I gave it a special quality that will allow for some one shot kills against moderately tough targets.

Plasma weapons, in the fiction they are monsters. Good pen and a LOT of damage. I might actually tone the Pen down. Make it Just a point or two over the bolters but with the recharge requirement allowing it to only fire every other turn it's probably fine.

Meltas, less range, more damage and pen. No recharge but between the small clips and short range I think they're fine.

Melee, here's where it gets sort of iffy. In the chain department I upped the damage slightly along with more pen. The marines are larger so are the weapons. I think once you take into account the marine's increased strength they'll behave how I'm wanting them too. Power weapons, this is sort of... odd. I've seen two schools of thought on them, the one Deep seems to be advocating that it does no more damage than a regular sword just with great pen, but at the same time I've read many accounts that would indicate the power field does more than let them slice right through armor, its also doing a good deal of damage itself. I think the best example of this is the power fist. Obviously the power field does more damage than normal or else a powerfist would just do damage like a punch. It doesn't, even in the Inquisitor's rule book it's doing 2d10E with double the user's strength bonus. That meshes with what I've read in places like Brother's of the Snake that mention some kind of disruption effect that literally blew its targets apart. Also I wanted them to be a significant improvement over chain weapons and make them deadly even to a space marine.

So that's the rationale behind how I arrived at these stats. I'm open to discussion on them.

Sorry about the weapon table but there's no good way to format it I can find for the board.

Weapon Class Range RoF Damage Pen Clip Reload Special

Bolt
Bolt Pistol Pistol 50m S/2/- 2D10+5X 4 Pen 10r Full
Bolter Basic 150m S/3/5 2D10+5X 5 Pen 24r Full
Heavy Bolter Heavy 200m ~/3/10 2D10+10X 6 Pen 400r 3 Full
Bolt Sniper Rifle Basic 500m S/-/- 2D10+5X 6 Pen 10r Full Accurate, Telescopic Sight, Bipod, Gibby

Plasma
Plasma Pistol Pistol 50m S/-/- 3D10+5E 5 Pen 8r 2 Full Overheats
Plasma Gun Basic 150m S/3/- 3D10+10E 7 Pen 20r 2 Full Overheats
Plasma Cannon Heavy 250m S/-/- 5D10+10E 10 Pen 30r 3 Full Overheats

Melta
Melta Pistol Pistol 30m S/-/- 3D10+10E 10 Pen 3r 2 Full
Melta Gun Basic 50m S/-/- 4D10+10E 12 Pen 5r 2 Full
Multi-Melta Heavy 80m S/-/- 5D10+10E 16 Pen 15r 4 Full

Melee
Chain Sword Melee 1D10+5R 3 Pen Balanced, Tearing
Chain Axe Melee 1D10+8R 5 Pen Tearing
Power Sword Melee 2D10+5E 6 Pen
Power Longsword Melee 2D10+8E 7 Pen
Power Fist Melee 2D10+10E 8 Pen 2xSB, Unwieldy
Power Axe Melee 2D10+8E 6 Pen
Lightning Claws Melee 2D10+5E 12 Pen Balanced, Tearing

Grenades
Frag SBx3 3D10+5X 2 Pen Blast (6)
Krak SBx3 3D10+10E 10 Pen
Smoke SBx3 Smoke
Photon Flash SBx3 Flash
Inferno SBx3 3D10E 6 Pen Blast (5), Fire

Gibby Successful aimed, called shots to the head do double damage.

Grey Knights don't just pray all the time. If you think so, you, I'd probably never want to play a Sororitas with you either (not that there's a chance we'll ever play together but hey).

Space Marines certainly do have depth. Read the novels, play the compy games, whatever. The "answer to everything being a gun" thing is orks, not marines.

Very interesting weapon balance rationale there.
The only thing I'll say about it is this: It seems based on every hit being a -direct- hit. It's not how most rpg's work. but it does make sense.

Last time I checked the rules there are no glancing blows. For the purposes of comparing damage there's little reason to factor in misses, they're entirely a result of the users BS skill and nothing to do with the weapon in particular.

The only time damage from multiple hits comes up is in talking about how many bolter shots it'd take to down a space marine and if you read it I make it clear that I speak of it taking several bursts to get the multiple hits necessary to put down a marine.

As for the GK's, in the books Grey Knights and Dark Adeptus the only GK that had much of a role doing anything besides praying outside of combat was their commander. Everyone else spent most of their time praying and going through cleansing rights. Sororitas are more pious than your average imperial but they've got nothing on GK's.

My group tried the rules from Dark Reign and it was fine. Hell the assassin did more overall damage than the marine because he was afraid to unbalance the game.

I don't have a problem with it. In fact, I'm waiting for the Deathwatch RPG to be unveiled.

As am I, it's just sixteen months out.

Oh I know there's no rules for glancing blows, I meant that rationally, it's the only way to explain not dying from a bolter shot, it's that it turned out to be just a flesh wound. Most RPG's work that way, it's only when you lose your last few HP's (or whatever they call them) that you're actually wounded for real, the rest is just scratches and bruises, like in movies.
RPG's in general and Dark Heresy in particular, are very cinematic games that are meant to make us visualize awesome (and gory) scenes. The system itself seems to support that. How else could anyone be considered Lightly Wounded after being shot by... well, anything, really.
The system doesn't support glancing hit sand flesh wounds but it supports us assuming and rationalizing that any hits that doesn't kill or gravely wound wasn't a direct hit.

Well, our first combat encounter just ended. I'm satisfied with the way the marines handled it. Weapons all seemed to be doing the damage I was hoping for. The range was 90m though and my ork boyz had a hard time hitting the marines. It was only exacerbated by most of the marines having dodge skills that combined with their agility gave them dodges on 60's or less. 2/3rds of the time even if an ork connected the marine would be able to dodge it. Even full autofire would have trouble connecting with more than a hit or two.

I do need to rebalance some of the ork weapons.

I don't see as to why someone would want to play a SPESS MEHREEN in a DH game. I mean, if playing as a normal human being is beneath you, I guess I understand, but if you wanted to be able to play with your +5 Sword of slay everything and your Armor of immune to all attacks, you could play Exalted instead.

That's a very narrow-minded way of looking at it.

Any GM and player group should be able to shift the balances of encounters enough that they are challenging to the Marine players whilst still showing the prowess and superiority of the Adeptus Astartes.

Space marines, in the RPG and fluff, are so ridiculously powerful that to give them a proper threat means that same threat can easily wipe out the entire party.

That said, with Rogue Trader or DH Ascension the players are more powerful characters with resources and support that could match a single space marine, so it's more of an option. It may be 1 space marine, but you might also have a rogue trader with a large guard force backing him, allowing him to stay around and fight alongside the SM player.

But the real problem then, is that to provide ample challenge to the SM player without killing the entire party, or have the SM player dominate the game way too much because of his power, he'd constantly have to be separated off from the group doing his own thing, which defeats the purpose of role playing in a party.

That's why Marines are better suited to NPC roles, or if there's a Marine, then everyone is a Marine (ie. the Deathwatch RPG).

I think you're missing a few things. First of all everyone in the party has a role, and the Space Marine would pretty obviously be the main fighter and fire magnet of the group. Depending on the party the rest of the crew could be fine with that. I've got two people in my current group who don't care even a little bit about combat. An Adept who at 3k XP is still using a stub revolver and a tech priestess who spends all her advances on being a better multi-tool for the party. They're perfectly happy to let the more combat oriented members of the group have it. Secondly it's up to the GM to keep things balanced. He doesn't have to let a Space Marine get all the toys. The GM can keep the SM in regular armor and maybe let him have a bolter if the GM feels generous. Alternately the GM can craft encounters that let other party members use their skills and be important. If all the GM does is throw a dozen mooks at you then yeah, the SM will dominate and everyone else will find combat pretty boring. Of course, unless you're doing nothing but combat the SM will probably be bored during everything else.

Or just do what I'm doing, pure SM party.

I won't go into the details of the weapon changes etc, since I've never actually played this game system. Instead, I'd like to propose a different solution to the Space Marine damage problem.
In the "Black Ops" supplement to the GURPS gaming system, they introduce a special rule for suitably badass player characters. On a successful hit, instead of rolling for damage or anything like that, the player character instead gets to choose what he does to his target.

That ought to allow the space marines to be as badass as they need to be, without having to spend unnecessary amounts of time fiddling with numbers.

Not wild about that. First it removes a good bit of randomness and many enemies are going to take more than one hit to put down such as ork nobs and bosses.

I think you should consider introducing a Space Marine without any of his gear. And some kind of memory loss. That forces him to rely on the same weapons as the rest of the party and only his stats, skills and talents are what set him apart. Not the AP 9 Best-quality Holy Power Armour a player would obviously want, or their trusty Sanctified Power Sword or Boltgun with Blessed ammunitions. Make him buy armour and weapons with the no money he has. That will help balance him. Then he and the party can quest to retrieve his ancient gear and help him recover his memory and return to his Chapter undishonored.