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Spetulhu wrote:

GamzaTheChaos wrote:and so I ask being ignorant on any sisters of battle fluff. how physically strong are they? they seem much stronger then guardsmen.
I understand they have power armor but do they have implants that increase strength as well?

A GK is just a marine despite his training and gear, he dies as easily as any other marine. And the Sisters have Faith in the Emperor... some of them momentarily do things far beyond what seems plausible in order to put down enemies of the Church. If the SoB are fighting GK then obviously the Emperor wants the heretic marines to die. Common examples include increased strength or reaction speed, miraculously surviving a lascannon hit unscathed or sudden bursts of murderously accurate weapons fire. The Living Saint St. Celestine has even been known to return from tge dead in order to finish the fight.

Acts of Faith, in short. As in the rules their army has, but written into the story as impressive actions instead of +1S.

The Emperor, who was a psyker and didnt want to be worshiped?
Also the GK was founded by the Emperor, unlike SoB.

On topic, their strength is increase by their power armor and their rather intense training. Though SoBs dont have the implants (lol) that interface with their suits, so they wont be as dexterous in their suit as an SM.

They don't call them fisters of battle for nothing!

This is not suitable for Dakka. Please do not post things like this again.

Was gonna say that they still throw like girls but the post above me has me rattled.

Void__Dragon wrote:I could be wrong, but it's never been proven that the Acts of Faith are actually blessings from the Emperor.

Nor it was ever proved that Chaos Gods have any true power, nor that C'Tan are all so powerful and all, or that Necrons are numberless, or that Tyranids have some kind of "main fleet" going toward the galaxy...

Most things in 40k are just rumors, so we must belive it blindly since we have no proff for any of it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Spetulhu wrote: If the SoB are fighting GK then obviously the Emperor wants the heretic marines to die.

Ok....

1) Why would SoB fight GK? They are allies.
2) How are GK heretics?

"Real" 40k: They wouldn't.
Ward-ty k: Anyone can fight anyone, Grey Knights can fly in their mystical baby harnesses and will kill anything because THE EMPRAH SEZ SO!!!

On topic: Stormtrooper strength.

Jackster wrote:The Emperor, who was a psyker and didnt want to be worshiped?
Also the GK was founded by the Emperor, unlike SoB.

Belief has power in the 40k universe - just like behaviour and emotion, and other abstract concepts. I refer you to Orks, one race's hedonism giving birth to a god and causing a rend in the fabric of space-time, and the gifts of the Ruinous Powers to their most devoted servants. There's no reason to explicitly connect the actions/desires of the Emperor with the seemingly-miraculous powers of the Sisters of Battle - just that their belief in Him is as fervent as the Orkish belief that Da Red Wunz Go Fasta.

That said, there's also no reason to assume the Emperor has no hand in matters - remembering that his ideals of the atheist ultra-society of mankind were based on the idea that there were no traitor legions, that his people would not be subject to the whims of the Dark Gods and the machinations of the Empyrean (by virtue of the Golden Throne's original purpose), and - possibly most importantly - that he wouldn't be a corpse strapped to the galaxy's largest life support machine playacting the role of Interstellar Lighthouse. Given that things didn't quite work out the way he planned, it's entirely possible that he is no longer opposed to his own deification for pragmatic reasons - after all, if people are going to believe in something, and it's a choice between Him on Earth and the Ruinous Powers...

It's all hypotheticals in any case - all that is known is that the Sisters of Battle are capable of performing feats in the field of battle that others consider miraculous. Where, how, why, is all open to interpretation.

In answer to the topic question, on a basic level I'd expect them to be as strong as a storm trooper when outside of their armour. Stronger than a storm trooper when wearing it, but not as strong as an Ork or Space Marine (for obvious reasons), saving in very specific, brief, and dramatically appropriate instances of the aforementioned miraculous events.

Don't get hung up on the Acts of Faith, why SoB have them or the fluffy GrimDark setting where anyone fighting the Church must by default be a heretic...

The OP mentioned a story where GK fought SoB who seemed much tougher and stronger than elite guardsmen. I mentioned the Acts of Faith as one more possible explanation beyond their suits and training.

I'd say the level of an olympic level athlete natural strength wise, and then toss in the belief in the emporor giving them a boost, like an adrenalin charge in a difficult situation, that allows you to do something you might not ordinarily be able to.

4oursword wrote:"Real" 40k: They wouldn't.
Ward-ty k: Anyone can fight anyone, Grey Knights can fly in their mystical baby harnesses and will kill anything because THE EMPRAH SEZ SO!!!

Isn't it implied that the forces of the imperium despite being allies sometimes have objectives that run contrary to each other. Sisters and Grey Knights could end up duking it out if both are after the same thing, one because they believe it to be a holy artifact of the church and the other thinking its a demon posses artifact. In a rational universe they should stop and talk it out, but in 40K where there is only war, superstition and misinformation rules supreme and orders are absolute, anything is possible.

4oursword wrote:
On topic: Stormtrooper strength.

Also, this.
Sisters are trained at the scholla Progenum along with commissars and storm troopers. They are thus trained as warriors since they are children while being put through the rigors of the scholla and indoctrinated into the imperial cult to the extreme. I would put them on at least the physical strength of any storm trooper. As has also been noted they are made much stronger by their power armor. They should in theory have the same strength output as a space marine, but without the interface for the power armor that space marines have they are slower and effectively weaker.


on a side note, why the hell do orks only have 3 strength? Have you looked at them? Their arms are as thick as a space marine in their armor.

You want them to be strength five on the charge? 30 Ork boys with 4 attacks at S5 each on the charge?

No, they wouldn't be at the same strength as Space Marines just because of a neural linkup of some kind.

Oh, and don't act like the Black Carapace is the only neural linkup in the Imperium, there's plenty of others. The most common one is simply a cerebral plug, literally a plug at the base of the skull which connects to the brain and (optionally) a cord going from there to the equipment, or a direct plug from the equipment itself in the case of power armor. More advanced are implants like the Mind Impulse Unit favored by the Mechanicus, which assists in quickly converting thought into mechanical action as well as converting the senses of any equipment into senses for the human mind. Same location, but a far more advanced (and expensive) implant.

I'd always assumed that power armor was a strength multiplier, not a strength additive. A Marine is naturally strong, and his power armor amplifies that strength. Sister PA amplifies a lower base strength, so it stays lower.

Marine and Sisters PA also serve very different purposes. Marines are closer to commandos than modern heavy infantry, while sisters are almost protoypical mechanized heavy infantry. Marine PA is going to do more, and allow for more manuevering, while Sisters PA is designed for protection and handling heavier weapons than a human normally could.

Brother Coa wrote:Ok....

1) Why would SoB fight GK? They are allies.
2) How are GK heretics?

Most obviously, accompanying the very first mention of the Sororitas was a picture of one gunning down a Space Marine.

More broadly, there are plenty of examples in canon of fights kicking off between the various different branches of the Imperial military: c.f. the Macharian Heresy, the Badab War, the recent histories of the Soul Drinkers, Blood Ravens and Relictors amongst them. In that light it's not difficult to imagine the Sisters and Grey Knights coming to blows over misunderstandings or clashes of jurisdiction between the Inquisition and Ecclesiarcy. The former actually occurs in the Grey Knights novels. It makes sense from the studio's perspective that players should always be able to imagine plausible in-universe reasons for a given match-up on the tabletop.

On topic, unless there's anything in the fluff to suggest that they're commonly augmented, I'd presume the Sisters of Battle, like Stormtroopers and Commissars, to be very fit, determined and well-motivated baseline humans, nothing more.

It can even be that Inquisitor A tells "his" Grey Knights one thing and Inquisitor B tells "his" SoB another. Differences between Radicals and Puritans can easily result in armed conflict carried out on the back of those warriors who simply do not know all the details of why they are really fighting each other. Also, did not the latest GK Codex include a passage of Grey Knights attacking the Sisters?

Regarding acts of faith: Psychic phenomena can be pretty much excluded - apart from purity screenings in the Schola Progenium (where psyker genes would likely be detected), the 3E version of the Shield of Faith also negated "friendly" psychic powers, so they'd pretty much cancel themselves out. This idea was also continued in the official rules for the miniature of the corrupted and psychically active Ephrael Stern, who was no longer able to use Acts of Faith at all.
The way I am interpreting the available information is that there's two possibilities where those powers come from, though to not deviate from the original topic even more I'll just point to the longer explanation of my theory here: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/11/382275.page

Addendum regarding Sororitas strength: I'd actually think that Storm Troopers have a higher basic strength due to being males. Both are trained to peak performance, but genetically men do have an advantage in the strength area, whereas women are generally more inclined to become better shooters. As soon as a Sister puts on the expensive power armour, though, she'll very likely surpass him in strength as well.

SylvanaSekNadin wrote:on a side note, why the hell do orks only have 3 strength? Have you looked at them? Their arms are as thick as a space marine in their armor.

Maybe their muscles function differently or are less efficient. That said, are there not also lots of Orks that have S4? I always thought most Orks would be S3 or S4, whereas most humans would be S2 or S3.

Lynata wrote: the 3E version of the Shield of Faith also negated "friendly" psychic powers, so they'd pretty much cancel themselves out. This idea was also continued in the official rules for the miniature of the corrupted and psychically active Ephrael Stern, who was no longer able to use Acts of Faith at all.

While I agree with you that Acts of Faith aren't explicitly psychic in nature - though they are manifestly preternatural - I would point out that by your own very stringent views on what constitutes canon, old Shield of Faith 'never existed any more', and Ephrael Stern isn't fieldable, making her existence in new canon questionable.

That's an interesting and plausible way of looking at it. I've always nursed the suspicion that the Sisters, without realising the similarity, are basically doing sorcery - beseeching the Emperor by their acts of faith and summoning 'daemons of law' as living saints. I also like the notion that a psyker, who ultimately knows that he can perform, for want of a better word, 'miracles' by his own strength of will, simply can't have that kind of naive faith in something external.

I am, of course, probably not merely wrong but heretically so.

Females in mossad you say?

I'm sure she's strong for a woman. One might at Strength 3.

Please remember that 40k stats are abstract at best.
I doubt pulse rifles are actually stronger than bolters its just that the effect of shooting is more devistating.

In power armour it does increase. In dark heresy it does add +20 to strenght. Mostly from the servos enabling the person to move in it. SoB are not 'female space marines' either so aren't going to be 'roid filled feminazi nuns with guns.

The incident of SoB fighting GK in Ben Counters book is when an excommunicated Inquisitor uses them to protect him while he carries out his ritual. He claims to be a fully fledged Inquisitor, and that the GK are in fact CSM. Hence the attack, until the Cannoness realises what happened.

Mythal wrote:While I agree with you that Acts of Faith aren't explicitly psychic in nature - though they are manifestly preternatural - I would point out that by your own very stringent views on what constitutes canon, old Shield of Faith 'never existed any more', and Ephrael Stern isn't fieldable, making her existence in new canon questionable.

Ah, the rules for how the Shield of Faith works have changed - but by my personal definition of canon, fluff remains valid until contradicted. And that the Sisters sport protection against corruption is still mentioned in the new WD 'dex, even if the current rules do not incorporate it. As far as I'm concerned, this is just something that has now been pushed entirely into the background rather than being represented on the TT. Similar to how power armour should boost strength, but it doesn't change anything about the statlines, neither for Sisters nor Marines.

I can see why it may be deemed questionable, though. And I do hope for more clarity in future material (whenever it gets released). It'd just "fit" nicely. You still have genetic screenings in the Schola, anyways.

SylvanaSekNadin wrote:
Isn't it implied that the forces of the imperium despite being allies sometimes have objectives that run contrary to each other. Sisters and Grey Knights could end up duking it out if both are after the same thing, one because they believe it to be a holy artifact of the church and the other thinking its a demon posses artifact. In a rational universe they should stop and talk it out, but in 40K where there is only war, superstition and misinformation rules supreme and orders are absolute, anything is possible.

But that situation are rare to impossible. Most of the times they are fighting together, I only know about 1 incident they gun at each other. And when they saw who are they they shake hands and point their guns on heretics.

4oursword wrote:
Also, this.
Sisters are trained at the scholla Progenum along with commissars and storm troopers. They are thus trained as warriors since they are children while being put through the rigors of the scholla and indoctrinated into the imperial cult to the extreme. I would put them on at least the physical strength of any storm trooper. As has also been noted they are made much stronger by their power armor. They should in theory have the same strength output as a space marine, but without the interface for the power armor that space marines have they are slower and effectively weaker.

I imagine that they are trained to the limits of what Human body can take. They would be very good in close combat and highly durable. Add a power armor to this who beside protection gives a little increase in strength of it's owner and you get the picture. They only lack genetic alterations to be equal to Astartes, but being females that is impossible to them.

On a side note, why the hell do orks only have 3 strength? Have you looked at them? Their arms are as thick as a space marine in their armor.

Take 30 boys in 1 squad, everyone of them can attack 4 times. 30x4 = 120 attacks in melee. And that is death even for Terminators.

He's not saying attacks, but stength. And I have to agree, Boyz are on equal terms with SM's in terms of physical strength. A nob would be beyond that.

The Emperor nearly got killed by a Warboss for a reason.

Indeed, the reason Orks have lower strength than marines in tabletop is balance. Remember, even Marines used to be T3, until they decided that they needed to differentiate them more from humans.

I'm not sure that a normal boy would be as strong as a space marine. Once a nob it would be as strong IMO, and after a few battles would become stronger.

Nicholas wrote:I'm not sure that a normal boy would be as strong as a space marine. Once a nob it would be as strong IMO, and after a few battles would become stronger.

Nobs are most assuredly stronger than Marines.

Yes, I know, video game, but look at the nobs in Space Marine-- they can utterly manhandle a 2nd company captain and, unless you play very skillfully, you will die very, very quickly to one. This is pretty accurate in the lore. Marines don't win against Nobs through raw strength, they win through skill, speed, and ingenuity.

Melissia wrote:

Nicholas wrote:I'm not sure that a normal boy would be as strong as a space marine. Once a nob it would be as strong IMO, and after a few battles would become stronger.

Nobs are most assuredly stronger than Marines.

Yes, I know, video game, but look at the nobs in Space Marine-- they can utterly manhandle a 2nd company captain and, unless you play very skillfully, you will die very, very quickly to one. This is pretty accurate in the lore. Marines don't win against Nobs through raw strength, they win through skill, speed, and ingenuity.

Yes, but in fluff it would vary more. When is the point a boy becomes a nob? I always considered that once it became as strong as a marine it was considered a Nob. Then after the next battle it would still be a nob, but stronger than a marine.

Average Ork Boy isn't as physically strong as a Space Marine, especially with Power Armor. They're even smaller then Space Marines. Nob is an entirely different story.

In order to keep thread on topic I'm going to start a new thread on size and strength of boy to Nob to Marine.

From all the reading i've done ( pretty much every BL book in last 5 years). I can conclude that any ork with less physical strength then a SM would be someones bitch.

The big point here is, Ork's have brute strenght, that almost all they have in straight up combat. No martial abilty beyond smash it.

The avarage orks speed in combat would be about the same as a Guardsmen, thought by the time they become a nob, pre combat experience will have honed their skills. Not to mention their strength as well. That's why a single nob can beatface almost any single normal marine.

The biggest difference between a SM and a boy is speed, experience and training. Not strength. And offcourse power armor. Though in fluff, an Ork's massive strength has proved to balance the odds with that protection by quite a bit.

It's not without reason that your avarage choppa is about as sharp as a butter knife, they drive it through you with pure muscle power.

Soladrin wrote:The big point here is, Ork's have brute strenght, that almost all they have in straight up combat. No martial abilty beyond smash it.

Actually that contradicts the lore. Orks instinctively understand combat, and are brutally skilled at it. This is why their WS is equal to a Marine's-- they're very good at close combat fighting. Naturally, the d6 system leaves much to be desired and means that Orks could be on the low end of the WS4 category while marines are on the medium end (and veteran marines are on the high end, and so on), but the fact remains, Orks definitely have more martial ability than "smash it".

They are genetically designed supersoldiers, that make the design of Space Marines look almost amateurish.