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The wargear given to Astartes is leagues better than just about anything available to non-Astartes characters. The book-listed bolter is crazy powerful (though there's an errata addressing it). They are also beastly in combat, with their starting ranks of Unnatural Strength and Toughness (those Traits work differently in Deathwatch than they do in Dark Heresy).

So to keep things fair, how do I compensate for having a marine in the party?

Just make sure he isn't walking around being Billy Badass the whole game. Or at least make sure he isn't the only one. One of the primary jobs of a GM is to act as a referee. Don't be afraid to pull a player aside and say "I need you to tone it down a bit for the sake of the party".

 GKTiberius wrote:
So to keep things fair, how do I compensate for having a marine in the party?

Make combat rare and use numbers to even the odds rather than power.

If there's three enemies, the Marine can kill them in three turns, leaving the others to hide and cower.

If there's ten enemies, five of them can keep the Marine busy while the rest of the party deal with the other party members deal with their own opponents.

 Furyou Miko wrote:

Make combat rare and use numbers to even the odds rather than power.

If there's three enemies, the Marine can kill them in three turns, leaving the others to hide and cower.

If there's ten enemies, five of them can keep the Marine busy while the rest of the party deal with the other party members deal with their own opponents.

Good advice. One task a GM faces is making sure his players all get some game time. If there's a marine then he will naturally be a badass when it comes to combat, and the player will expect to get some part of the limelights. This is OK, as long as you make sure the others also get their part of the show. A marine is probably not very good at piecing together clues of chaos cults acting in the shadows, so the others can do things there. Once you're seasoned as a GM you can run a game for just about any party and let everyone feel they've done something.

If you're a novice it might be better to limit options a bit at character creation, just so you have some say about what the players bring to the table.

I am fairly familiar with balancing an unbalanced party like that from my 10 years of D&D GMing. I just have never run specifically this system . I tend to run more Role playing oriented games. Our group rarely does dungeon crawls, and our games usually involve political intrigue and social dynamics and only combat when necessary. We also have played some white wolf and shadow run, so I may pull on those too. One of my players asked of he could play a grey knight, and he said there were rules in the daemon hunters book. I don't have that one and he has ordered it. Does anyone have any experience with that? Would it be over powered in this type of game?

You could slow a marine's efficacy by having them roll for randomly falling through the floor.

 GKTiberius wrote:
I am fairly familiar with balancing an unbalanced party like that from my 10 years of D&D GMing. I just have never run specifically this system . I tend to run more Role playing oriented games. Our group rarely does dungeon crawls, and our games usually involve political intrigue and social dynamics and only combat when necessary. We also have played some white wolf and shadow run, so I may pull on those too. One of my players asked of he could play a grey knight, and he said there were rules in the daemon hunters book. I don't have that one and he has ordered it. Does anyone have any experience with that? Would it be over powered in this type of game?

Dark Heresy is definitely a system that lends itself well to role-playing and political intrigue. This is also a good way to keep that SM player in check. As Miko mentioned, combat is where the Space Marine can potentially break the game. He isn't useless in diplomacy and investigation, but the other acolytes will definitely be better at it.

Grey Knights are not really suitable for an intrigue campaign as most of the population are not meant to be aware of their existence.

Social and diplomacy oriented games where force is not an option is a good way to keep SM characters in check. Combat is their strength so at some point to avoid them being bored there should be combat, but there should also be times when they cannot simply smash their way through things and have to be more subtle.

Good point on the Grey Knight. And the space marine player wants to play a Jakero weapon smith... so I'm going to let him be a tech priest or whatever the tech career from rogue trader is (explorator I think) but modify his physical stats to be a monkey... (I'm not sure if this is possible and if it doesn't work he is thinking of going that career as human) unless we can find stats elsewhere.

Also is there a mechanicus book for dark heres/rogue trader?

There is one for Dark Heresy first edition, it's called The Lathe Worlds.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
There is one for Dark Heresy first edition, it's called The Lathe Worlds.

And it's overarching theme is "Anything you can do, a Tech Priest can do better". It offers some very good information, but be vigilant as it can make tech priest characters very powerful.

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