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Let's say a chapter was on a crusade, and thus constantly recruiting to make up for losses, yet after the crusade is over they find themselves above chapter strength? What would happen next? Would they just enjoy the surplus man power, or be expected to rectify this somehow?

I doubt anyone would notice unless it was seriously over strength - hundred or thousands would be needed I would think.

A number of named Chapters are over strength and the whole thing breaks down when you try and work it out.

If they think you are breaking the rules - then the Sisters will come and learn ya.

 Jaxler wrote:
Would they just enjoy the surplus man power, or be expected to rectify this somehow?

Time to go on a glorious crusade! Or volunteer some bodies for the Death Watch! Or send some recruits to Mars to train for Techmarine positions.

Nothing. Besides maybe step down recruiting if they really care about the codex. But remember the codex is actually a set of guidelines, its not a hard and fast rule. Plus nobody exists that can enforce it.

Space Marine chapters are pretty much in charge of policing themselves. An Inquisitor can still attempt to perform this task themselves if they are on good terms with the Chapter involved. Should a chapter start showing signs of treason by having too many forces above chapter strength, then either the Inquisition or other chapters will demand that a new sub-chapter be created, or else the Space Marine chapter will face the wrath of their brothers.

This is when new chapters get created.

Pick a fight with Tau. Problem solved.

If they get too big they make a new chapter or likely go do a fellow chapter thats from the same legion.

Martel732 wrote:
Pick a fight with Tau. Problem solved.

They paint their armour red and lock them in a room filled with aggressive school children, the new blood angels quickly falter against the threat.

Probably when they get 50% over strength they think about splitting off a new chapter. The benefits include:

1.) Removing troublesome elements to the new chapter
2.) Promotions, lots of them. Space Marines live a long time and a new chapter means new had positions for a lot of guys, with domino promotions galore working downwards. Nobody, not even space marines, want to wait for their boss to die before they get promoted.
3.) More assets - a Chapter's greatest power is its space fleet, and a new chapter gets new spacecraft (thanks Adeptus Mechanicus!), where an over-strength chapter won't get more tanks/planes/spaceships just because they have more dudes.
4.) Political allies - your new chapter will be strongly allied with the old, and TWO chapter masters have more political pull than just one. Goodness knows how many Chapter Masters the Ultramarines can call on for political influence. Many SM chapters rule entire planets, with all attendant resources.

A chapter can have 1000 marines - they are pretty strict about this. Scouts don't count. When marines die scouts get promoted - when marines don't die scouts stay scouts. This isn't a problem because marines die...ALOT. At least this is how the Ultra marines work.

 Xenomancers wrote:
A chapter can have 1000 marines - they are pretty strict about this. Scouts don't count. When marines die scouts get promoted - when marines don't die scouts stay scouts. This isn't a problem because marines die...ALOT. At least this is how the Ultra marines work.

Whilst on crusade you can go above chapter strength, this is the loop hole that black templates use, or at least I believe this to be true.

 Xenomancers wrote:
A chapter can have 1000 marines - they are pretty strict about this. Scouts don't count. When marines die scouts get promoted - when marines don't die scouts stay scouts. This isn't a problem because marines die...ALOT. At least this is how the Ultra marines work.

If you read the TOEs GW provides in the books a Chapter has a thousand Marines in the ten-company structure. The armoury, fleet, command staff, honour guard, librarius/reclusiam, et cetera aren't counted in the thousand.

So a Codex Chapter at full strength will usually have 1,300-1,500 Space Marines running about in various capacities.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
A chapter can have 1000 marines - they are pretty strict about this. Scouts don't count. When marines die scouts get promoted - when marines don't die scouts stay scouts. This isn't a problem because marines die...ALOT. At least this is how the Ultra marines work.

If you read the TOEs GW provides in the books a Chapter has a thousand Marines in the ten-company structure. The armoury, fleet, command staff, honour guard, librarius/reclusiam, et cetera aren't counted in the thousand.

So a Codex Chapter at full strength will usually have 1,300-1,500 Space Marines running about in various capacities.

Also not counted in the Ultramarine's 1000 Space Marines...

The Cook Marine
The Secretary General Marine
The Morale Support Marine
The High-Fives Kids at the Playground Marine
...

It depends on what you define to be an active space marine. After all, scouts are effectively space marines, too, right, but they don't count towards the total.

Nobody really cares?

The strength of a chapter ebbs and flows with the fortunes of war. A successful chapter who has grown in power to the point of exceeding the 1000 marine limit is unlikely to be punished. After all, the Imperium likes winners.

They go to war.

 Yarium wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
A chapter can have 1000 marines - they are pretty strict about this. Scouts don't count. When marines die scouts get promoted - when marines don't die scouts stay scouts. This isn't a problem because marines die...ALOT. At least this is how the Ultra marines work.

If you read the TOEs GW provides in the books a Chapter has a thousand Marines in the ten-company structure. The armoury, fleet, command staff, honour guard, librarius/reclusiam, et cetera aren't counted in the thousand.

So a Codex Chapter at full strength will usually have 1,300-1,500 Space Marines running about in various capacities.

Also not counted in the Ultramarine's 1000 Space Marines...

The Cook Marine
The Secretary General Marine
The Morale Support Marine
The High-Fives Kids at the Playground Marine
...

The Morale Support Marine and the High-Fives Kids at the Playground Marine probably fall under the Reclusiam. The Secretary General Marine is just the Chapter Master of the Red Hammers and Sickles Chapter, and the food is probably cooked by a Servitor rather than a Marine.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Melissia wrote:
Nobody really cares?

The strength of a chapter ebbs and flows with the fortunes of war. A successful chapter who has grown in power to the point of exceeding the 1000 marine limit is unlikely to be punished. After all, the Imperium likes winners.

Qualifier on this one: nobody cares so long as you don't go overboard with it or wave it in peoples' faces. A Chapter that decides to try growing back to Legion strength and goes around having grand parades in front of important officials is likely to get excommunicated and then blown up, a Chapter that goes a bit over now and again and doesn't point it out to anyone isn't going to get noticed.

I can't speak for most chapters but black templars just start another crusade, you never have too many marines while there's witches to burn.
Templar's are just special snowflakes - they think any colors except black, white, gold and crimson are too fancy plus any space marine who isn't fighting or praying for a fight is basically a heretic.

Besides the whole 1000 marine thing is more of a guideline than actual rule right?

Codex compliant chapters stick as close as possible to 1000 because 10 thousand years ago some hipster wearing blue armour (refer to 'fancy') with severe daddy issues decided he knew best .
Other chapters tend to found a successive chapter if they find them self significantly above strength. The most codex compliant (ultramarine i'm looking at you) probably take this to the extreme:

"Well lads, good news and bad news, the good news is despite being eaten twice by a carnifex Brother Dave somehow managed to survive our final offensive so we now number 1001. The bad news is that means someones gotta go and, well, it's really his fault so dave, go start your own chapter, just make sure you wear blue okay". - Mareneus Calgar

Give them each a knife and point out to them that there are only 1000 dorms?

 AnomanderRake wrote:
Qualifier on this one: nobody cares so long as you don't go overboard with it or wave it in peoples' faces. A Chapter that decides to try growing back to Legion strength and goes around having grand parades in front of important officials is likely to get excommunicated and then blown up, a Chapter that goes a bit over now and again and doesn't point it out to anyone isn't going to get noticed.

That's true.

I was mostly thinking "oh that chapter has a quarter again as many as it should have." In which case the Inquisiton's probably watching them, and pushing them to participate in harder battles so they take casualties that reduce them back to full.

But if they're getting to Space Wolves or Black Templar levels...

All great answers but there are some clues.... in the fluff.

Imperial Armour 9 talks about the Astral Claws being over strength... admittedly having gone rogue and having about 2 to 3K marines... how they did this was by not submitting gene seed samples to Terra and as the rebellion drew on then using dead marines they captured to provide the gene seed.

The obvious way its controlled is by amount of gene seed. If they grow a certain amount... they must have to tithe for testing a certain amount which the books states. It was this lax in tithe that led to the Inquisition and Terra to question the Astral Claws in the first place.

I would say the process is self replicating... if a chapter is at regular strength, it must produce a certain ammount of gene seed... which a proportion must return to Terra or wherever they are kept... to found new chapters... then if the amount of samples is too little... questions would be asked. Of course its fairly easy to check as well. Oh hi... so no battles this year? and your saying what? No scouts either? Hmmmmm lets check your figures. Im not saying its fool proof but a chapter could only get away with it for so long. (and remember not for long is probably 300 to 800 years or so)

How is it policed... simple. It's policed by other SM chapters... if chapters started breaking rules and flouting them... Terra would get cranky.... no SM chapter master wants that. So they would look after their own. The Badab rebellion is the perfect example of this. Policed by SM chapters who remained loyal.

Well the FT have only got about 400 and they dont care if they dispose of a Inq or two.
Guess you could get around a few issues, nope, theyre not battle brothers. Hes a sergeant, hes a specialist, That dude over there is wounded and the guy works for the fleet. Hes taken the carapce, but hes a bit of a numpty, thats why him and the other 25 nearly marines aint counted.

Great thread.To add to the answers so far, while SMs are all equal and independent, well, some are more equal than others (first foundings and allies to AdMech, the High Lords, etc) and some are less independent (successors, AdMech allies, High Lord allies, GKs, etc). Both can be good and bad.

And nobody will play favourites in the Imperium, but if you play nice with the various institutions and act like a good boy your supplies may make transit fanster, but if you get too crazy, well, the Minotaurs* exist and might be just a bit more crazy still.

For the actual action against a wayward chapter, that also depends. From an official investigation and rebuke by one of the political or theological governing bodies to a whispered word from an inquisitor to penitant crusade to Exterminatus everything goes. One WD story had a chapter nearly wiped out after an Inquisitor declared them heretic and -more importantly in the shadow-y dealings the Imperium actually runs on- managed to convince others to see his way, too. I think it was the Relictors and they got an open visit from the Grey Knights (and one of their artefacts stolen by the Inquisitor). During Armageddon the Celestial Lions on the other hand were met with Ork snipers killing their specialists, so consequences for offending the Inquisition alone can take many different forms.

*A chapter (or several) of Marine-killers held back (or even hidden) by Terra is actually a very good idea by the writers and, given the Heresy, a logical thing to do. Even Pre-Heresy Russ agreed to act as an executioner when called on to bring Magnus down. Besides, on the table it's always Marines killing Marines, so someone should specialise in that.

Well they can slow recruitment of new marines or graduation's to full battle brother status.

If your only abit over and happened to be taking less losses and over recruit. That's not a issue.

Its of you are over recruiting, your over manned on a sustained basis and over strength by a considerable degree then people start asking questions.

Now if that happens, a crusade, yay. Lets go kill people!
Deathwatch always needs new good marines to sign up.
Start working on petition to make a new sub chapter and have a nice handy future allied chapter to your own. (dark angels... We not a legion)
Maybe tithe some scouts over allies who are weaker of same geneseed to reinforce a old alliance.

Codex compliant chapters stick as close as possible to 1000 because 10 thousand years ago some hipster wearing blue armour (refer to 'fancy') with severe daddy issues decided he knew best .

To be fair to RG - one of the main problems was that the Legions were vast armies and included their own integral Ad Mech, Navy and Army support and so if they went rogue only another Legion could stop them.

The whole point of Chapters is to keep the elite fighting force but make it so they can't pose the sort of threat that the Legions posed. Now several of the main Chapters are straying towards that threshold but none of them are quite there yet and can rely on their status as First (or Second) Founding to protect them quite a bit.

The Space Wolves had a unfeasible amount of warships - several hundred (!) but seemed to not have the comparable Astartes manpower although they did also have the non Astartes manpower to man several Star forts!

Ultramarines have a huge fiefdom and loyal "pdf" forces but relatively low levels of warships

Black Templars (depending on the fluff which varies) may have huge Astartes forces but they almost never act as one force.

Dark and Blood Angels (like the Ultras) have very strong links to the successor Chapters - a bit suspect but more difficult to prove.

As others have said the Imperium monitor Astartes by gene seed tithe and they can send various levels of response - up to and including Sisters of Battle if purity is in question, also the Inquisition should be keeping an eye on them - if it only results in using gathered info as leverage.

Most Space Marine Chapters don't like interfering with their brethren - there are notable exceptions as shown in the Babab War.