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In tabletop game rules. I'm talking more applied to "real world" physics of high speed, fragile ammunition against hardened armor.

Though technically, shuriken weapons have the same chance to penetrate power armor as lots of things. As in none. They penetrate by bypassing the armor. Hitting weak spots, etc. If they strike the hard surface armor, they do nothing. If the armor "saves", no damage. If it does not, then the strength of the weapon is measured against the squishy bits of the Marine underneath (though 40K reverses the rolls for simplicity's sake).

My thought it that it would take significantly less sophisticated armor to defeat shuriken ammunition than it would to defeat las weapons.

nomotog wrote:I have seen some people argue that power armor is immune to bolt gun fire.

Hah. On what grounds?

I think these people would misinterpret the abstracted rules. AP in the tabletop means that the weapon is so powerful that it would breach the armour every single time. If power armour were "immune" to boltgun fire you would not have to take an Armour Save to prevent being wounded by it.

In GW's Inquisitor RPG, the rules resolve armour saves a bit differently, by having each armour sport a specific armour protection rating, which needs to be overcome by the weapon's raw damage. And Space Marine power armour is AV10, whereas bolters do 2d10+4 damage (using normal ammunition). So ... yeah.
Coincidentally, lasguns do 2d6, which means they have a chance of 16.6% of wounding an armoured Astartes. Which fits nicely to what the tabletop's Angels of Death Codex already noted, regarding the "50-85% protection against most common small arms".

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
In tabletop game rules. I'm talking more applied to "real world" physics of high speed, fragile ammunition against hardened armor.

Though technically, shuriken weapons have the same chance to penetrate power armor as lots of things. As in none. They penetrate by bypassing the armor. Hitting weak spots, etc. If they strike the hard surface armor, they do nothing. If the armor "saves", no damage. If it does not, then the strength of the weapon is measured against the squishy bits of the Marine underneath (though 40K reverses the rolls for simplicity's sake).

My thought it that it would take significantly less sophisticated armor to defeat shuriken ammunition than it would to defeat las weapons.

If power armor was made to defeat weapons like the lsagun and med-range weapons (by this I mean weapons less than anti-tank) you think the humble lasgun would have better status than they do in game.

Also from my understanding and IMO boltguns were made with the idea to defeat power armor, just doesn't show in game play. The power of a space marine IMO in the current time has changed from the HH due to the fact that they no longer have the army size to fight long wars of attrition and even during the HH they didn't like to fight that way (expect for a few like the Iron Warriors and Imperial Fists)

 Lynata wrote:

nomotog wrote:I have seen some people argue that power armor is immune to bolt gun fire.

Hah. On what grounds?

I think these people would misinterpret the abstracted rules. AP in the tabletop means that the weapon is so powerful that it would breach the armour every single time. If power armour were "immune" to boltgun fire you would not have to take an Armour Save to prevent being wounded by it.

In GW's Inquisitor RPG, the rules resolve armour saves a bit differently, by having each armour sport a specific armour protection rating, which needs to be overcome by the weapon's raw damage. And Space Marine power armour is AV10, whereas bolters do 2d10+4 damage (using normal ammunition). So ... yeah.
Coincidentally, lasguns do 2d6, which means they have a chance of 16.6% of wounding an armoured Astartes. Which fits nicely to what the tabletop's Angels of Death Codex already noted, regarding the "50-85% protection against most common small arms".

They claimed that you needed a vengeance round to penetrate the armor.

DW keeps that same armor value too. It's 10 in the chest and 8 everywhere else. They also list las rifles at about 7, pulse rifles at about 16, bolt guns at about 20.

Seems that armor isn't the cause of SMs invincibility.

Edit: forgot about pen values.

Well, it doesn't take vengeance rounds in the tabletop, the Inquisitor RPG, or GW's fluff.
I won't dismiss the possibility that vengeance rounds would be necessary somewhere else, though ... 40k fluff isn't uniform, as we see every so often.

DW has the innate ruleset problem of Toughness basically making Marines invincible to many weapons due to how it forms a second layer of armour, thus basically doubling their resilience.
In Inquisitor, Toughness just governs how well you can deal with injuries you receive - but it does not prevent them. Which I think is a much better approach, as it does not result in characters getting tougher than the armour they wear, or from becoming invul to guns that should actually harm them.

I don't think DW considers it a problem. They try to replicate the BL style where SM take on hoards of everything. Though it dose kind of reenforce the idea that power armor isn't all that wonderful. Even in the most out there version of SMs power armor can be penetrated by a a few las rounds.

 Void__Dragon wrote:

 Stonerhino wrote:
Space marines... Lets see; An army of Captain Americas with the best armor and guns SHIELD can find them... Sounds about right.

I'd liken them more to an army of Wolverines, with not quite as good healing abilities and no claws.

Wolverine couldn't be killed by a gun. Captain America is a better fit strong, tough, fast and smart.

PA is a good armor because of its sloped surfaces. So if a shurican or bolt shot hits the armor at any sort of angle it will deflect away. It would only penetrate if it hit a weak spot, like a joint, or it hit the armor dead on. And even than bolt shells are often depected as flattening on impact and falling away. Its all about the angles and if the armor has been damaged by repeated impacts.

nomotog wrote:
I have seen some people argue that power armor is immune to bolt gun fire.

I guess those people think that power armor and bolters were originally created as a kind of "paintball" exercise for the Marines?

 Grey Templar wrote:
PA is a good armor because of its sloped surfaces. So if a shurican or bolt shot hits the armor at any sort of angle it will deflect away. It would only penetrate if it hit a weak spot, like a joint, or it hit the armor dead on. And even than bolt shells are often depected as flattening on impact and falling away. Its all about the angles and if the armor has been damaged by repeated impacts.

Ah, but Cap is still "technically" only enhanced to the peak of human potential, Wolverine is a bit beyond that. I should have noted sans the adamantium skeleton though.

Also, power armour is not immune to bolter rounds, but it is resistant to it, Marines in the fluff have taken shots to the head from point-blank and only suffered a busted up helmet.

 Grey Templar wrote:
PA is a good armor because of its sloped surfaces. So if a shurican or bolt shot hits the armor at any sort of angle it will deflect away. It would only penetrate if it hit a weak spot, like a joint, or it hit the armor dead on. And even than bolt shells are often depected as flattening on impact and falling away. Its all about the angles and if the armor has been damaged by repeated impacts.

Sloped armor is nice. It allows it to deflect some of the force just not all the force like you seem to think. (This actually makes me wonder if anyone ever tried to defend boom armor as tactically sound because of the sloped curves.)

Again though, the Black Library fluff suffers from the Inverse Law of Armor, or the Law of Conservation of Armor.


In any given fight, there is only so much armor available to any given side. So while one single protagonist might be invincible, his bolt rounds will tear through hordes of opposing Marines.

 Manchu wrote:

nomotog wrote:
I have seen some people argue that power armor is immune to bolt gun fire.

I guess those people think that power armor and bolters were originally created as a kind of "paintball" exercise for the Marines?

Technically, the Marines weren't designed to fight eachother. Boltguns were designed to kill the galaxy's other squishy bits.

The idea of Marines fighting Marines came later. And realistically, in the context of the 40K universe, Chaos Marines fight Space Marines relatively rarely. Hence the need for the specialized rounds that exist in the fluff(and game) for killing power armor. But typically, a Space Marine is fighting lightly armored, low toughness opponents where the cheap, readily available standard ammunition is more than sufficient.

People still have a hard time divorcing the fluff from the tabletop rules. 40K the game is not an accurate representation of how warfare would work if 40K was real. It's just a set of rules to sell models and allow for balanced fights between evenly matched forces on neutral terrain. You know, something that almost never exists in actual warfare, lol. The boltguns in 40K are firing the standard issue ammunition, which is light armor piercing, anti-personnel.

It's really no wonder, however, that role playing games fail to depict realistic combat effects either, lol. I mean, come on here. Nobody wants to play a combat simulator. Companies have tried that, many times, and they end up being niche games for hardcore gamers. Combat also tends to take forever because of all the variables and tables and modifiers, etc. Deathwatch even goes so far as to just lump enemies into giant packs of fodder because killing enemies one at a time is so boring and takes too much time. Sorta hard to take it too seriously as the authority on combat mechanics of 40K weapons.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
Again though, the Black Library fluff suffers from the Inverse Law of Armor, or the Law of Conservation of Armor.


In any given fight, there is only so much armor available to any given side. So while one single protagonist might be invincible, his bolt rounds will tear through hordes of opposing Marines.

Was that to me?

That happened in the 4e Chaos Marines codex.

nomotog wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
PA is a good armor because of its sloped surfaces. So if a shurican or bolt shot hits the armor at any sort of angle it will deflect away. It would only penetrate if it hit a weak spot, like a joint, or it hit the armor dead on. And even than bolt shells are often depected as flattening on impact and falling away. Its all about the angles and if the armor has been damaged by repeated impacts.

Sloped armor is nice. It allows it to deflect some of the force just not all the force like you seem to think. (This actually makes me wonder if anyone ever tried to defend boom armor as tactically sound because of the sloped curves.)

Where did I say it would deflect all of the force? The armor is sloped quite a lot for body armor on top of being made out of incredibly sturdy material.

 Void__Dragon wrote:

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
Again though, the Black Library fluff suffers from the Inverse Law of Armor, or the Law of Conservation of Armor.


In any given fight, there is only so much armor available to any given side. So while one single protagonist might be invincible, his bolt rounds will tear through hordes of opposing Marines.

Was that to me?

That happened in the 4e Chaos Marines codex.

If it was to you, I'd have quoted your text wouldn't I have?

I think much of a space Marine's 'power' comes from reputation and psychology more than anything else. Which is actually more potent than one might think in 40K, given that thought and emotion influence the Warp. So all the gear given to the Space Marine, the overengineered body and superhuman abilities, all basically go towards building and maintaining that reputation as champions/heroes/figures of terror and awe and intimidation.

Because from an objective standpoint its rather hard to justify Space Marines as cost effective otherwise

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
If it was to you, I'd have quoted your text wouldn't I have?

Not if you were feeling particularly lazy.

 Void__Dragon wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
PA is a good armor because of its sloped surfaces. So if a shurican or bolt shot hits the armor at any sort of angle it will deflect away. It would only penetrate if it hit a weak spot, like a joint, or it hit the armor dead on. And even than bolt shells are often depected as flattening on impact and falling away. Its all about the angles and if the armor has been damaged by repeated impacts.

Ah, but Cap is still "technically" only enhanced to the peak of human potential, Wolverine is a bit beyond that. I should have noted sans the adamantium skeleton though.

Also, power armour is not immune to bolter rounds, but it is resistant to it, Marines in the fluff have taken shots to the head from point-blank and only suffered a busted up helmet.

Wolverine's regen abilities seperate him to far from the baseline SM though. Captain America might be a little below a SM in physical combat and healing. But he does offer a great example as in an army of Caps to represent a SM Legion well enough.

Finding a true-ish example of PA is harder though.

Sm power armor have been shot though by IG lasguns before. Its though but not like a comic book alloy. I will agree Sm's are more cap then wolverine, although either would murder a Sm one on one That may be mostly as comics tend to be even more OTT then 40k.

Again though, Black Library Law of Conservation of Armor. Obviously in that story, there was too much armor being used by the other side, so that Marine's power armor was weakened.

They are strong. But they will fall to numbers just like anyone else. If they carry 200 bolt's for their boltgun at any one time, then they are probably good to kill 150 folks, before moving to hand to hand, so one marine vs a small town overrun with ork's, will die. No matter how powerfull, overwhelming numbers will beat down marines.

However, toe-to-toe, a marine is only outmatched by the very best of other armies. An ork warboss, an eldar farseer, e.x, will give them a good fight, but the rank and file of other armies, rarely can compare.

Evileyes wrote:


However, toe-to-toe, a marine is only outmatched by the very best of other armies. An ork warboss, an eldar farseer, e.x, will give them a good fight, but the rank and file of other armies, rarely can compare.

Funny how these non elites, ya know normal eldar troops or orks often kill dozens or more SM's then isn't it

Evileyes wrote:
They are strong. But they will fall to numbers just like anyone else. If they carry 200 bolt's for their boltgun at any one time, then they are probably good to kill 150 folks, before moving to hand to hand, so one marine vs a small town overrun with ork's, will die. No matter how powerfull, overwhelming numbers will beat down marines.

However, toe-to-toe, a marine is only outmatched by the very best of other armies. An ork warboss, an eldar farseer, e.x, will give them a good fight, but the rank and file of other armies, rarely can compare.

An average ork nob should be about equal to the average marine. They don't have as fancy gear as marines but they're stronger and much tougher
Edit: An Eldar Exarch should be superior to a Marine

Fun tip: everyone google "Warhammer Movie Marines List" to see how powerful SPESS MEHREENS would be if their stats matched their fluff...

Ferrum_Sanguinis wrote:Fun tip: everyone google "Warhammer Movie Marines List" to see how powerful SPESS MEHREENS would be if their stats matched their fluff...

I knew it was just a matter of time since this would pop up.

Yes, I'd really like if people would actually read the WD article themselves instead of repeating this urban myth. There's a reason the list is called Movie Marines and not Real Marines or something, and it says it right at the start:

"Thankfully, most people understand the concept of dramatic license, an amusing little technique that involves exaggerating or ignoring facts, physical laws, and general plausability to keep things entertaining. Space Marines are embellished in fiction, where their heroism and invincibility are accentuated."

The article outright uses the background of an Imperial propaganda film starring Space Marines to alleviate the fears of the local population against alien invasion by showing the Astartes in an obviously overhyped way. Anyone who thinks that Movie Marines = Real Marines has never actually read the article, or worse, is so steeped in Marine bias that they subconsciously ignored half of what it said, including the fact that the list includes Stunt Doubles to be purchased at 10 points each. "Real" 40k warfare right there. Oh, and of course, the Movie Marine special rules are only available to the Movie Marine army, even if they're fighting other Space Marines or CSM...

The Movie Marines list is pretty much a self-own for anyone trying to argue the case of Space Marines being "truest" in their stories.

This is an excellent example of what I have posted earlier about the fact-twisting, though! And deliciously ironic, as this very same article also says "the use of dramatic license can be misleading to Space Marine players".

I would presume that it is a good list for recreating the majority of novels out there, though ...

 Lynata wrote:

Ferrum_Sanguinis wrote:Fun tip: everyone google "Warhammer Movie Marines List" to see how powerful SPESS MEHREENS would be if their stats matched their fluff...

I knew it was just a matter of time since this would pop up.

Yes, I'd really like if people would actually read the WD article themselves instead of repeating this urban myth. There's a reason the list is called Movie Marines and not Real Marines or something, and it says it right at the start:

"Thankfully, most people understand the concept of dramatic license, an amusing little technique that involves exaggerating or ignoring facts, physical laws, and general plausability to keep things entertaining. Space Marines are embellished in fiction, where their heroism and invincibility are accentuated."

The article outright uses the background of an Imperial propaganda film starring Space Marines to alleviate the fears of the local population against alien invasion by showing the Astartes in an obviously overhyped way. Anyone who thinks that Movie Marines = Real Marines has never actually read the article, or worse, is so steeped in Marine bias that they subconsciously ignored half of what it said, including the fact that the list includes Stunt Doubles to be purchased at 10 points each. "Real" 40k warfare right there. Oh, and of course, the Movie Marine special rules are only available to the Movie Marine army, even if they're fighting other Space Marines or CSM...

The Movie Marines list is pretty much a self-own for anyone trying to argue the case of Space Marines being "truest" in their stories.

This is an excellent example of what I have posted earlier about the fact-twisting, though! And deliciously ironic, as this very same article also says "the use of dramatic license can be misleading to Space Marine players".

I would presume that it is a good list for recreating the majority of novels out there, though ...

That and the Space Marine video game, where three marines single handily beat and entire ork WAGH...

They didn't take on the whole Waaagh. They made a surgical strike to take out the Warboss while the IG engaged the bulk of the Ork forces. Chaos came in a muddled the whole thing up a bit.

They still killed what felt like thousands upon thousand of Orcs with just three guys.*
I just finished the campaign last night. Sooo badass.

I'm actually tempted to say that the Space Marine game would be a good representation of Marines ... you'd just have to take away the recharging "armour shield" as well as the magical hitpoint regeneration.

Good game, though, even if it was a tad unintuitive at some points. Now I'm rocking the multiplayer as a Celestial Lion or an Emperor's Children Marine, respectively.

(*: I'm still a bit puzzled why a Captain would drop into a fight with one Sergeant and one random dude instead of leading his Company. Was that ever explained or are we supposed to "just roll with it"?)

Eh, it was probably so you could actually feel relevant like you were doing important stuff. Although I feel they could have had the rest of the Company drop down with you, have chatter over the comms, occasionally see a thunderhawk flyby or a Drop Pod or three crash down, maybe see assault marines flying about occasionally. Have 3-5 marines follow you around or randomly show up through the area you are fighting in. Be accompanied by a full command squad.

Basically:

In Fluff/Novels - Depends on how the Author writes them, this actually goes for any race in the wh40k universe.

ex: Still remember that one book i read by bowden(Cadian blood i think) where a stormtrooper takes down a nurgle dreadnought by climbing infront of the sarcophagus and kills the astartes inside by blasting away into the vision slit, which is ironically rather believable if said vision slit didn't have any sort of protective glass or covering.

In Games - Depends on how the rules are