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The main question is who told you that lore definitely says space marines are 8-10 feet tall?

Nurglitch wrote:This is why Chainfists and other breaching weapons exist.

my favorite weapon, you get to punch and cut!

amanita wrote:Marines are really only 7-7.5 feet tall, but who's counting?

Nevertheless the point stands, in that having over-sized troops becomes a liability in many situations. As said before, an attachment of Imperial Guard would certainly be helpful.

Maybe the marines should start using enhanced canines to root enemies out of small places? Like a cyber-dachshund? ; )

Cybermastiffs are a thing in 40k, aren't they?

Well you could simply write it off as people have to move large stuff about. Fridges, Tool benches, Where they can fit a marine can fit. But the Imperium is built to stc for the most part.
Sewers, Imagine how much crap a hive puts out. Im surprised they arent super highways of gak. Same goes for palaces and factories.
Now if charlie built a custom tunnel system that he wanted to walk upright in, a marine could duck and trusting his armour.
I could see marines prosecuting a war, hunched over and squatting like aliens air duct fighting.
If theres only room for 1 person to charge, crouched like that. Well the enemy leadership, threat. Probably isnt down that tunnel.

"just punch through the wall" "just explode it"
Well... some buildings, esp. industrial ones have several meters strong reinforced concrete walls simply for structural reasons. And you know, after WW2 they tried to blow up many bunkers (from the inside, mind) with huge charges but it didn't work. Going through a thick concrete wall takes a lot of time, even in modern times. Making a tunnel or corridor that is too tight to allow acces wider can be even more time consuming (assuming it is long). If the building is not designed specifically for Marines, and they have to stop at every entrance (and expend ammo or explosives) to make a hole large enough will take them hours, because there can be hundreds of doors, doorways and tight corridors. Plus they risk bringing the hole building down on them by their "forced entry" method. Power armour wont protect them from being crushed by thousands of tons of concrete.

And that's just buildings. There are millions of mining worlds that dig deep underground, through dangerous caverns and so on. They are not going to waste time and dig it all out for a marine to fit through (and sometimes couldn't as the cave or cavern would just collaps)

In Black Sun Iron Sky (?) some IG soldier escapes from a marine when inside an orbital defense missile silo by crawling into an air duct or maintenance shaft iirc.

Here's a couple of pics from underground bunker chemical production facility where marines definitely would be forced to either turn back or spend considerable time to go through.
Nuke-protected entry, Height 1,8m Width 0,7m, thick concrete wall backing. Several doors in a row.


Maintenance tunnels & entries (note: the pipes could contain dangerous liquids, flammable gases, acid, whatnot)


A floor marines can't stand on (and would fall several dozend meters down), a ladder they can't climb (would rip out), a hole in the wall they don't fit through

But the Imperium is built to stc for the most part.

It doesn't add up for me. There would have to be a gajillion STC's , because what we see in fluff and artwork and hobby - every planet looks different, different build styles and so on. Given how rare STC's are supposed to be, i doubt the majority of buildings are made according to STC. Maybe stuff you find in hive cities, large civilized worlds etc. But smaller worlds (feudal worlds) will not have been built via STC, simply because STC came after they have been integrated into the imperium. Maybe they have a couple of buildings built after the imperium got there, but the majority will be non-STC. Concrete is so simple to use you don't need STC to build something. Make a hollow shape with boards or whatever, pour concrete in, done. You can even strengthen interior walls, making the rooms/corridors smaller and tighter. Something a rouge world would definitely be capable of.

Back in the original Cityfight publication, I believe it was mentioned that theres a lot of punching through walls, etc.

As for tunnels? Send the Scouts if you need to, or wait for the Guard. Or just sack up and go in without power armor, it's not like they need it to be a bunch of mean hombres. It'd be like whole squads of Rambos. Bring along Servo Skulls to scout ahead.

Marines are 7 ft. 7 feet and superhuman swoll is plenty huge.

The simple answer is that if they can't access a place or breach it, then they aren't the ones sent to accomplish the task. Space marines are only a tiny percentage of the imperium's military, and they are a specialist force - psychological and shock warfare. Every description of a space marine conflict involves them showing up, smashing the highest value targets, then leaving the imperial guard, inquisition, sisters, etc. to clear up whatever remains. In boarding actions, the same is true - they board and assault the highest priority targets: engines, command center, shield generators, all of which are very spacious. They don't crawl through maintenance hatches, etc.

The Deathwatch RPG gives heights for marines. It's nowhere near 8 ft.

Read your rulebook!

DontEatRawHagis wrote:
So Space Marines are about 8-10ft tall according to the lore.

According to Jes Goodwin, who designed the dang models, they're 7 feet tall, including their armour. Part of the reason this started though is probably because the life size sketch he did is misnumbered, accidentally adding a foot:

As far as intent though, they have/had(?) a copy of this at WHW for "How tall are you compared to a Space Marine" that was definitely scaled to seven feet, so I'm supposing that this really was just an numbering mistake.

As far as I'm concerned, that overrides anything any Black Library authors have written, particularly as there's a tendency for an arms race with "well, this marine is supposed to be tall, so we'll make him seven and a half feet" and then "this marine is really tall, so we'll make him eight feet", often adding height in stupidly large chunks of half a foot at a time.
You don't need to add many inches to "tall" to get "really tall". I'm 6' 2", which already puts me into about the top 10% of UK males. My old headmaster was 6' 5" - it's only three inches more, but damn did it make him seem huge.

The other thing is that the fans frequently massively exaggerate things, which can feed back into what authors are writing.

Compare Captain Titus and 2nd Lt. Mira actually in the Space Marine game, where Titus isn't much more than a head taller:


... versus this piece from DeviantArt, where the artist has decided that he's actually three heads taller:

Link

~~~~~

The thing is, it doesn't make sense for Marines to vary much in height anyway. Astartes are created under very carefully controlled conditions, with Apothecaries monitoring and adjusting hormone levels constantly. Given that you therefore have quite a lot of control the size of your Space Marines, but they need to fit into specific sizes of century old armour... well, it might be me crediting the Apothecaries with more common sense than most people in the Imperium have, but it strikes me that you'd try to grow your Space Marines to be the right size for the armour and minimise any variation, massively easing the logistics over needing to maintain and adjust armour in several sizes.

This also ties into the question of the whole topic - while Marines being a bit bigger than humans does provide them with an advantage, being too much larger than humans is wildly impractical.

While important buildings of the Imperium or the nobility might be huge, the Imperium's architecture is constantly inundated with contrast - anywhere belonging to lower classes will often be a cramped rat warren.
Given that their original intent was crusading through mostly human occupied territory and then defending it, they need to fit into places like underhives.

I'm currently writing a sci-fi setting where one of the characters is an experimental/showcase attempt at creating an AI super soldier. Being a robot, she could have easily been all sorts of inhuman sizes... but no, she's six foot three, because it's far more useful if she can fit in buildings, use normal vehicles and the like.
(She still weighs more than a quarter of a tonne, because she's fully armoured, and needed the weight to allow her to really utilise her strength. It occasionally causes issues with flimsy furniture, but it's generally within what most floors and cars can withstand).

Yes, physically powerful and intimidating has its benefits, but too much is a problem.
With this in mind, I personally interpret the Primaris as not all that much taller than standard Astartes - particularly as it's generally accepted that the old Space Marine models weren't big enough, and I sort of expect to see the older Astartes phased out of the model range over time. (In any case, as I recall, the wording is generally that they're "bigger", which doesn't necessarily have to mean "taller").

Although the Imperium causing itself easily avoided problems is a fairly major theme of the setting, I also like to explore my stories and characters without constantly running into "Fridge Logic", so I try to keep the line from being on the wrong side of complete idiocy too often.

You don't have to enter the building to purge the enemy when you have a heavy flamer.

Remember how rare Space Marines are, if you believe the codex numbers 1,000 chapters x 1,000 marines. Most people have barely heard of them.

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:
You don't have to enter the building to purge the enemy when you have a heavy flamer.

True, but you might wish to go in to retreive information - briefings, maps or whatever the enemy has.

And while the Imperium often is wildly impractical (because tradition) a super-soldier who can't use items made for normal humans is a super-soldier who is totally useless if he loses his gear. A fanfic huge marine could perhaps strap on the flak armors of two or three regular soldiers if he loses his power armor, but no helmet. If he loses his bolter he's reduced to his knife and whatever he can create with it, like spears...

I find the "oh they just send someone else then" proposition funny - when marines are often the "last ace up the sleeve" before exterminatus that doesn't seem like a good counter to the problem?

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:
You don't have to enter the building to purge the enemy when you have a heavy flamer.

A small shack or simple house may be burned down or smoked out. A huge underground complex, potentially even fortified and environmentally sealed can not.

@MarcoSkoll
It's the old teen superhero mentality of bigger = better that's to blame here i think. That and bolter porn authors wanting to one-up their characters to be special. Anyone who really thinks it through wouldn't want marines bigger than the official statements.

 Keep wrote:

It's the old teen superhero mentality of bigger = better that's to blame here i think. That and bolter porn authors wanting to one-up their characters to be special. Anyone who really thinks it through wouldn't want marines bigger than the official statements.

BTW i think in some BL book one marine was noticeably bigger by bein' wider - and his teammates joked that he must slow down his over-the-top workouts if he want to keep go through doors etc. IIRC it was in one of DeathWatch novellas.

PS Isn't in M41 most chapters lost much knowledge and capability for proper implantation so process became very ritualistic and resuts are both less predictable and with lesser success ratio than rushed version during GC/HH?

Basically everything in M41 is ritualised. They carry out the sacred ritual of rejuvenation, apply holy oills and cloths and thank the Machine Spirit. We turn it off and on again.

 MarcoSkoll wrote:


The thing is, it doesn't make sense for Marines to vary much in height anyway. Astartes are created under very carefully controlled conditions, with Apothecaries monitoring and adjusting hormone levels constantly. Given that you therefore have quite a lot of control the size of your Space Marines, but they need to fit into specific sizes of century old armour... well, it might be me crediting the Apothecaries with more common sense than most people in the Imperium have, but it strikes me that you'd try to grow your Space Marines to be the right size for the armour and minimise any variation, massively easing the logistics over needing to maintain and adjust armour in several sizes.

Although the Imperium causing itself easily avoided problems is a fairly major theme of the setting, I also like to explore my stories and characters without constantly running into "Fridge Logic", so I try to keep the line from being on the wrong side of complete idiocy too often.

I like the story where John Grammaticus finds the Alpha Legion and while every one looks the same he can make out slight height variations and other minor details. Then he finds Alpharius and Omegon; to which they are perfectly identical without surgery or other modification. I’m not saying their height has to vary. I’m just saying I like that Space Marines are only kind of like their Primarch and the Geneseed can only go so far.

 MarcoSkoll wrote:

DontEatRawHagis wrote:
So Space Marines are about 8-10ft tall according to the lore.

According to Jes Goodwin, who designed the dang models, they're 7 feet tall, including their armour. Part of the reason this started though is probably because the life size sketch he did is misnumbered, accidentally adding a foot:

As far as intent though, they have/had(?) a copy of this at WHW for "How tall are you compared to a Space Marine" that was definitely scaled to seven feet, so I'm supposing that this really was just an numbering mistake.

As far as I'm concerned, that overrides anything any Black Library authors have written, particularly as there's a tendency for an arms race with "well, this marine is supposed to be tall, so we'll make him seven and a half feet" and then "this marine is really tall, so we'll make him eight feet", often adding height in stupidly large chunks of half a foot at a time.
You don't need to add many inches to "tall" to get "really tall". I'm 6' 2", which already puts me into about the top 10% of UK males. My old headmaster was 6' 5" - it's only three inches more, but damn did it make him seem huge.

The other thing is that the fans frequently massively exaggerate things, which can feed back into what authors are writing.

Compare Captain Titus and 2nd Lt. Mira actually in the Space Marine game, where Titus isn't much more than a head taller:


... versus this piece from DeviantArt, where the artist has decided that he's actually three heads taller:

Link

~~~~~

The thing is, it doesn't make sense for Marines to vary much in height anyway. Astartes are created under very carefully controlled conditions, with Apothecaries monitoring and adjusting hormone levels constantly. Given that you therefore have quite a lot of control the size of your Space Marines, but they need to fit into specific sizes of century old armour... well, it might be me crediting the Apothecaries with more common sense than most people in the Imperium have, but it strikes me that you'd try to grow your Space Marines to be the right size for the armour and minimise any variation, massively easing the logistics over needing to maintain and adjust armour in several sizes.

This also ties into the question of the whole topic - while Marines being a bit bigger than humans does provide them with an advantage, being too much larger than humans is wildly impractical.

While important buildings of the Imperium or the nobility might be huge, the Imperium's architecture is constantly inundated with contrast - anywhere belonging to lower classes will often be a cramped rat warren.
Given that their original intent was crusading through mostly human occupied territory and then defending it, they need to fit into places like underhives.

I'm currently writing a sci-fi setting where one of the characters is an experimental/showcase attempt at creating an AI super soldier. Being a robot, she could have easily been all sorts of inhuman sizes... but no, she's six foot three, because it's far more useful if she can fit in buildings, use normal vehicles and the like.
(She still weighs more than a quarter of a tonne, because she's fully armoured, and needed the weight to allow her to really utilise her strength. It occasionally causes issues with flimsy furniture, but it's generally within what most floors and cars can withstand).

Yes, physically powerful and intimidating has its benefits, but too much is a problem.
With this in mind, I personally interpret the Primaris as not all that much taller than standard Astartes - particularly as it's generally accepted that the old Space Marine models weren't big enough, and I sort of expect to see the older Astartes phased out of the model range over time. (In any case, as I recall, the wording is generally that they're "bigger", which doesn't necessarily have to mean "taller").

Although the Imperium causing itself easily avoided problems is a fairly major theme of the setting, I also like to explore my stories and characters without constantly running into "Fridge Logic", so I try to keep the line from being on the wrong side of complete idiocy too often.

Thank you for posting this. It makes me happy to see sensible space marine heights. Since BL started they have gotten silly. Did not know about the jets goodwin sketch and now I do it’s all I need to know. He is the man and such a huge part of why I love 40k. Good work sir.

DontEatRawHagis wrote:So Space Marines are about 8-10ft tall according to the lore. I've seen estimates of Power Armor being around 500 lbs.

This came up in one of my Deathwatch RPG games years ago where we had to convince a farmer to see us outside his wooden house because if we entered it we would have to make a new door and possible get trapped in his basement. How do Space Marines deal with this?

I imagine this is not a problem on more standard Imperial worlds as the High Gothic architecture has large ceilings and entry ways. I just imagine a scenario similar to Dalek in Doctor Who with stairs (Prior to the hovering capabilities being known), where Space Marines must stop because a cultist ran thru a small hole. Or they have to get to a target location, but need to cut through Adamantium walls because the door ways are so small.

According to the lore they're seven to seven-and a half feet tall, not 8 to 10. Pretty damn big, and broad, but let's be honest - it won't stop them going most places, even If they have to crouch a bit or duck their heads to get through a door...

BrianDavion wrote:

 Valkyrie wrote:
I'd imagine ships, bunkers and buildings are simply always built to accomodate larger individuals. Marines aren't the only larger ones in the Imperium, there's also Ogryns, Techpriests and thousands and thousands of augmetic components that could increase one's size, so it'd make sense that structures are naturally taller inside to accomodate these.

I also struggle with the notion that Marines are 8-10' tall, just seems too unrealistic, I've always imagined them as around 7', possibly 8' for Terminators.

IIRC they're 7 feet. 8 in power armor, 9 in terminator armor.

Power armour doesn't add a foot. Terminator armour doesn't add two. That's ridiculous, frankly. They're not wearing heels. Unless you are looking a thing a chaos space marine and counting the three foot top-knot that's tied onto a stack of half-a-dozen skulls.

The idea that any Space Marines would be taller than 8 feet tall seems ridiculous to me and even then, a Space Marine closing in to the 8 feet tall must some sort of grave anomaly about as rare as a 7 foot tall human, literally one in a million Space Marine would have such a size.

It's so unpractical. It makes you a massive target for your ennemies. In close combat, it might be dandy since it gives you reach and even more strength and power thanks to the extra mass, but most of 40K battles are still range engagement. If you present a target with a profile about twice larger than a normal guardsmen, even a crapshot conscript will be able to hit you reliably.

The idea of Space Marine being large make sense to visually represent their superhuman strength, make them look very intimidating and not quite human. One should not go to far on the other way though. Space Marines should not be giants. This habit of making certain characters enormous is common in many work of fiction. The Mountain in games of throne is supposed to measure 8 ft tall according to the book or something close to that. It's easy to lose sense of scale when writting in a book with no visual aid to compare all the objects in a scene with one another. The actor who plays him measure 6 ft 10 and looks absolutly gigantic compared to the rest of the cast (or any normal human being really). Can you imagine how absurd an 8 foot tall person with the same mensuration would look like? Ain't now way it can fight in a human size bunker or worse in a viet-cong style tunnel.

epronovost wrote:
The idea that any Space Marines would be taller than 8 feet tall seems ridiculous to me and even then, a Space Marine closing in to the 8 feet tall must some sort of grave anomaly about as rare as a 7 foot tall human, literally one in a million Space Marine would have such a size.

It's so unpractical. It makes you a massive target for your ennemies. In close combat, it might be dandy since it gives you reach and even more strength and power thanks to the extra mass, but most of 40K battles are still range engagement. If you present a target with a profile about twice larger than a normal guardsmen, even a crapshot conscript will be able to hit you reliably.

The idea of Space Marine being large make sense to visually represent their superhuman strength, make them look very intimidating and not quite human. One should not go to far on the other way though. Space Marines should not be giants. This habit of making certain characters enormous is common in many work of fiction. The Mountain in games of throne is supposed to measure 8 ft tall according to the book or something close to that. It's easy to lose sense of scale when writting in a book with no visual aid to compare all the objects in a scene with one another. The actor who plays him measure 6 ft 10 and looks absolutly gigantic compared to the rest of the cast (or any normal human being really). Can you imagine how absurd an 8 foot tall person with the same mensuration would look like? Ain't now way it can fight in a human size bunker or worse in a viet-cong style tunnel.

There was a thread on Marine size a few weeks ago and someone suggested 10' marines. Which is absurd. I made the point that in any ordinary European semi detached house the ceiling is 8' foot off the floor! Imagine adding 2' on to that? Ridiculous.

Marines were, until the advent of fan fiction/certain Black Library novels, always 7 - 7.5 feet tall. And I think that was actually in their armour. Which means they're still considerably taller than that actor who plays The Mountain.

Pretty sure this is why our termies come stock with power fists.

Also falling down is probably not enough to hurt a Marine. Unless it's like a super big drop. Even then, they'll probably just bounce a few times and get back up.