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Grey Templar wrote: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.

Yeah, that would've been neat.
At least they had a bit of this during the assault on the Spire, where you also meet a bunch of Blood Ravens.

It was still cool. I just thought that maybe they've come up with an explanation that I just missed, like having your other squads get shot down or dispersed, basically botching the hot drop.

Man, I'm saddened that the game didn't get an expansion now.

Viersche wrote: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.

Hmmh, if it's just glass - even sci-fi glass - it probably would not offer as much protection as the massive plates of armour around it? Even lasguns (at least in GW's books) have an explosive effect on the target surface, and Storm Troopers are using a high-powered version of them. And that's assuming that the warped Chaos version of a Dread still has this glass rather than just sporting an empty slit, as reckless as that may be.

I have to say, it's at least more believable than a guy managing to climb up a rampaging Dread without getting thrown off.

 Hunterindarkness wrote:
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.

Wolverine probably. Cap maybe, it depends on how well he could use the edges of his shield to breach power armour. I personally doubt that something that can withstand a monomolecular chainsword will be easily penetrated though.


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 Hunterindarkness wrote:
Sm power armor have been shot though by IG lasguns before.

Through the more structurally weak parts I guess.


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 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
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.

Yeah, it reminds me of Know No Fear, which I recently read. I laughed a bit when an Ultramarine took a bolter shell to the face, and only suffered a fethed up helmet and wounded lip, and proceeded to fire right through the Word Bearer's chestplate, lol. Abnett-grade plot armour too strong.

Void__Dragon wrote:Through the more structurally weak parts I guess.

Well, the Inquisitor RPG gave Astartes Power armour 3 points of ablative armour to the breastplate. This basically means it counts as having a protective rating of 13, though those ablative points will be stripped away by the very first three points of damage. What this means for lasguns is that even a well-placed shot to the chest (maximum of 12 damage) would fail to penetrate, but it would strip away enough armour to allow subsequent shots to punch through (as the chest armour is then reduced to 10 points, like on any other location).

That is, of course, assuming that one were to go by the rules in the Inquisitor RPG. It's just one of many interpretations - in FFG's RPGs, the combination of the armour and the owner's physical toughness makes him entirely invulnerable to lasguns (~20 resilience vs a maximum of 13 damage), unless you roll Crits. In fact, there a Space Marine even becomes invulnerable to ordinary bolters, and plasma headshots will do 2-3 points of damage (and it takes ~20 of these before they actually start to take injuries) ... that is, if you're lucky and roll the maximum amount.

Plasma guns are hilariously terrible in FFG though.

And... They have a resilience of 16, not 20, last I checked.

Void__Dragon wrote:And... They have a resilience of 16, not 20, last I checked.

Yeah, you're right ... a value of 16 to 18 would indeed be more correct, assuming an average of TB 8 + AP 8 or 10 (for chest). You can get to 20 (and beyond) if you roll really well or purchase Toughness advances, but that's not what I would consider to be the norm.

Also, I actually think plasma guns are pretty awesome... against normal people, anyways. It's just that I really don't think Toughness working like a second layer of armour here (and in some cases even surpassing your actual armour) was such a good idea.
Pretty much my biggest gripe with their rules so far. Still love the d100 system tho.

 Lynata wrote:
Yeah, you're right ... a value of 16 to 18 would indeed be more correct, assuming an average of TB 8 + AP 8 or 10 (for chest). You can get to 20 (and beyond) if you roll really well or purchase Toughness advances, but that's not what I would consider to be the norm.

Also, I actually think plasma guns are pretty awesome... against normal people, anyways. It's just that I really don't think Toughness working like a second layer of armour here (and in some cases even surpassing your actual armour) was such a good idea.
Pretty much my biggest gripe with their rules so far. Still love the d100 system tho.

Well, I consider the listings in the bestiaries to be the "norm" personally.

I am mostly talking Dark Heresy core plasma guns, which were total bs.

And looking at the plasma weaponry in the DW rulebook, it has a pen of 8, and does 1d10+8 damage. All that right there by default would invalidate both the average Marine's power armour bonus (Unless it hits chest) and toughness bonus entirely, allowing you to make one to ten+ (Accounting for Righteous Fury) wounds in one shot. And that's the plasma pistol, lol. And doesn't take into account semi-auto fire. AND it doesn't take into account the errata, which does 1d10+10 damage. And the plasma gun does +12 and has pen 10.

A bolter is also entirely capable of going through power armour and wounding the Marine, with 1d10+9 with a pen of 4, and the ability to semi-auto fire three rounds.

As I said, "ordinary" weapons, not the souped up Astartes stuff. For some reason, FFG has chosen to differentiate between the weapons wielded by normal men and Space Marines - making the latter invulnerable to a lot of stuff the former can wield. Even Marine flamethrowers are burning hotter, apparently.

But I should have stressed the "ordinary" bit more, perhaps using a different term. Sorry for the confusion.

Barring Righteous Fury, a lasgun is indeed incapable of harming a Space Marine.

A boltgun? It is possible, but difficult, barring gak like special ammunition or whatever.

the core plasmagun is so generally terrible it warrants no mention at all IMHO. Inquisitor's handbook variants are much more capable though.

Don't listen to Void Dragon. This is the same guy that vehemently believes that you can't make a dodge or parry test when you run, even though one of the DH designers just said that you can on FFG's forum.

What a noob.

 Gargantuan wrote:

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

Or they pick up a different gun, in the sixth space wolves book a squad runs out of bolter ammo and had already scavenged all they could so they picked up hellguns and the pack leader picked up an ig meltagun. They still had the sacred bolters strapped to the travel clip on their packs but if out of ammo I would hope other chapters arent stupid enough to not bend down and pick up a slugga

 Gargantuan wrote:

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

Yeah, but slower and dumber. Slow and dumb is a good way to get killed on a battlefield. Especially one with subdermally detonating rocket munitions flying around, fired by absurdly precise, aim assisted transhuman killing machines, lol.



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Lynata wrote:
(*: 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"?)

Coming into this one a bit late. I wasn't even aware the game still had a multiplayer presence really. I was rocking my Pre-heresy World Eaters scheme for Chaos.

As far as the plot, I think you just have to mulligan it. The game is an action shooter, which is typically a genre where the PC is the hero. Hard to be too heroic when you've got an entire army of other awesome dudes with you all the time, haha. I agree though, it might have made more sense for the hero to have been a Veteran Sergeant or something. But the story was pretty basic and archetypal. Stalwart leader with his grizzled and trusted veteran adviser, and then the eager rookie who knows the theory, but not the application.

I rather enjoyed the fact that the plot of Space Marine seemed to constantly poke fun at the Graham McNeill Theory of Ultramarining as Titus chastises whatever the rookie's name was for taking the Codex literally. My only problem with it, is that it still supports the Graham McNeill Theory of Ultramarining, where the Codex Astartes is some kind of ludicrous "Warfighting For Dummies" guidebook with prescribed solutions, rather than an exhaustive treatise on military theory on warfighting application like it is supposed to be according to the original fluff.

As strong as the storyteller needs them to be, usually.

GW is very inconsistent about this. At one point, Marines get overpowered by a Spore Mine, while at another one, Marines can tear apart tanks.


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 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
Yeah, but slower and dumber.

Oddly enough... no. Orks are startlingly fast for their size, and are quite intelligent when it comes to anything war-related.

The primary advantage Astartes have is training and equpment. Ork bodies are actually probably superior to Astartes bodies.

Once the topic shifted to Orks vs. Marines, I knew it was only a matter of time until Melissia joined the fray.

Anyway, this whole "they're as strong as they need to be" thing is nonsense. Anyone with a brain can use law of averages to figure out, roughly, what a Space Marine's capabilities are.

BlaxicanX wrote:
Once the topic shifted to Orks vs. Marines, I knew it was only a matter of time until Melissia joined the fray.

Anyway, this whole "they're as strong as they need to be" thing is nonsense. Anyone with a brain can use law of averages to figure out, roughly, what a Space Marine's capabilities are.

That depends on how yo'ure using averages-- the mean can be distorted far easier by outliers than the median can, for example.

So if you want to view your average in favor of a stronger marine, you'd use a mean to calculate it, while if you wanted to view it as a weaker marine, you'd probably use a median. Statistics is funny like that.

And why should the law of averages dictate anything, anyways? With most products, we're not looking at material aiming to depict a consistent setting but simply to tell a cool story. Would we really want Space Marine capabilities to be defined by their popularity? That's a dangerous path to tread, although that probably depends on what each of us thinks of comicbook heroes versus a sense of realism in any given setting.

 Melissia wrote:

BlaxicanX wrote:
Once the topic shifted to Orks vs. Marines, I knew it was only a matter of time until Melissia joined the fray.

Anyway, this whole "they're as strong as they need to be" thing is nonsense. Anyone with a brain can use law of averages to figure out, roughly, what a Space Marine's capabilities are.

That depends on how yo'ure using averages-- the mean can be distorted far easier by outliers than the median can, for example.

So if you want to view your average in favor of a stronger marine, you'd use a mean to calculate it, while if you wanted to view it as a weaker marine, you'd probably use a median. Statistics is funny like that.

I don't know what the difference is between a mean and a median.

Explain it to me.

edit- Go home Lynata you're drunk.

<3 Baileys

 Lynata wrote:
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"?)

Don't SMs have regenerating health in GW fluff?

Ya for better or worse the video games always feel more realistic then any novel. The balance feels about right in SM. Like how a knob is stronger then you, but you can beat him with cunning and skill.

Okay.

TAke the following numbers:

10 2 1 3 3 5 5 5 9 7 7 4 4 6 6 8

To obtain a Mean, you add them up and divide them by the number of numbers-- what is traditionally thoguht of as the primary definition of "average" amongst the US schools. The "mean" average of this set of numbers is ~5.3-- adding all of the numbers together, and then dividing the result by sixteen, the total number of numbers.

The Median is obtained in a slightly different way. The Median is the midpoint in a frequency distribution of the values-- that is, when they are arranged like so:
1 2 3 3 4 4 5 5 5 6 6 7 7 8 9 10
As there are an even number of numbers, you take the two middle numbers, add them, divide by two. In this case, it is five plus five divided by two, or five. The median of this number set is, as a result, five.

But the reason why one would make use of a median over a mean is the important part. Let's take the number set and add an outlier:
1 2 3 3 4 4 5 5 5 6 6 7 7 8 9 10 1000

The Mean for this new set of numbers is ~63.8. This number, however, is not really representative of most of the numbers in the set, now is it? Most of the numbers are between one and ten, and no where near 63.
Thus, the Median is more useful. In this case, it is still five, as that is the middle number of the frequency distribution.

Thus, in the presence of outliers, the median is much more useful than the mean, as it is much less effected by outliers than the mean. Both, however, are considered "averages". And thus, if you wanted to calculate an Astartes' strength and have the result be higher, knowing that there are more outliers in the upper end of things, you'd use a "mean" average, whereas if you wanted a lower average, you'd use the "median".

[/shrug]

... go on..

I have no idea what that has to do with SMs?

Shrug, if you insist.

So, let's take the examples of Marines being pretty weak (the dawn of war books took this route, likely unintentionally, and arguably any of the Guard books take this route since the guardsmen always end up killing a marine or five at some point in the series), versus the ones being very, very strong (several mairne books where marines are able to tear orks in half or rip open tanks without a power fist exist). Most books with Marines don't really go in to great deal about their strengths, however, and you're left with the feeling that Marines are strong, but you have no clue how strong they are without their power armor.

There are more books that have them be obscenely strong than weak, however. Would you prefer to lean on the side of "Marines can flip over tanks on their own!" (taking the average, trying to include as many books that exaggerate Astartes strength as possible) or "Marines are stronger than any non-bodybuilder human, but require power armor to accomplish the more legendary feats of strength" (taking the median, going with the more common books that tend to be less illustrative of the Astartes' strength)?

I go with the latter, myself. It fits in with most novels, and also fits in with the various RPGs as well (even Deathwatch, which is basically Movie Marines: The RPG, didn't have Marines be that much stronger than humans, although they did usually hit a bit harder in melee). And it suits the fluff of a strength four creature quite nicely.

...go on...

 Lynata wrote:
And why should the law of averages dictate anything, anyways? With most products, we're not looking at material aiming to depict a consistent setting but simply to tell a cool story. Would we really want Space Marine capabilities to be defined by their popularity? That's a dangerous path to tread, although that probably depends on what each of us thinks of comicbook heroes versus a sense of realism in any given setting.

I demand an explanation for why this post, and only this post, of yours appears to have been made in the USA, and how the rest of your posts were made in Ireland.

EXPLAIN IT TO ME.


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 Melissia wrote:
Shrug, if you insist.

So, let's take the examples of Marines being pretty weak (the dawn of war books took this route, likely unintentionally, and arguably any of the Guard books take this route since the guardsmen always end up killing a marine or five at some point in the series), versus the ones being very, very strong (several mairne books where marines are able to tear orks in half or rip open tanks without a power fist exist). Most books with Marines don't really go in to great deal about their strengths, however, and you're left with the feeling that Marines are strong, but you have no clue how strong they are without their power armor.

There are more books that have them be obscenely strong than weak, however. Would you prefer to lean on the side of "Marines can flip over tanks on their own!" (taking the average, trying to include as many books that exaggerate Astartes strength as possible) or "Marines are stronger than any non-bodybuilder human, but require power armor to accomplish the more legendary feats of strength" (taking the median, going with the more common books that tend to be less illustrative of the Astartes' strength)?

I go with the latter, myself. It fits in with most novels, and also fits in with the various RPGs as well (even Deathwatch, which is basically Movie Marines: The RPG, didn't have Marines be that much stronger than humans, although they did usually hit a bit harder in melee). And it suits the fluff of a strength four creature quite nicely.

In Deathwatch, the average Marine, per the rules, can lift 1,350 kilograms. Or about 1.5 tons.

The strongest humans would fall well short of that.

Also, bodybuilders? While stronger than the average man, they aren't nearly as strong as they look.

I find the bodybuilder-analogy strange, I would have gone for strongmen personally. That's more like the Space Marines, but even they are well short of the Space Marines.

No Sm in deathwatch is "average", They are damned skilled and above the cut on skill, toughness and power. They are top tier Sm, not line cannon fodder.

For deathwatch it depends. Graham McNeil established a dangerous precedence with them sending Uriel Ventris to the Deathwatch to get him our of the hair of the Ultramarines. That's the exemplar chapter, and they seem to send away people being too liberal with the Codex Astartes to the deathwatch.

 Hunterindarkness wrote:
No Sm in deathwatch is "average", They are damned skilled and above the cut on skill, toughness and power. They are top tier Sm, not line cannon fodder.

You misunderstand.

the "average" Space Marine, according to the bestiaries, Deathwatch or not, has a strength of 45, and a toughness of 45.

They also have unnatural strength and toughness x2, which doubles their bonuses.

So, they have a TB of 8, and a SB of 8, granting us a combined total of 16.

Sufficient to press 1.5 tons.

Gotcha, I do not own the DW RPG myself but do on All of RT and a good bit of DH.

The unnatural str will do that. That being said, that is not all that far out of the range that some humans can reach under the system. Which would be 12-14 total, although that be max and one freaking monster human.

However, I do wonder, is that counting the armor str boost? As it really should be higher then 45, I can make a human start at 45 in RT,( No Unnatural str though). I have a player in RT right now at rank 3( about rank 1 DW, I think) with standard PA with a str of 75( which can go up a wee bit more)

No, the armour str boost brings the total up to a total of 18. Sufficient to press 2,700 kilograms, aka about three tons.

Yeah, two more points nearly doubled the effective lifting strength.

Similarly, in DH, assuming best possible strength and toughness rolls for a feral world character (Who frankly, IMO, have the implication of subtle mutations or adaptions, like Void World characters), and using the Ascension supplement to allow two more characteristic advance, you could end up with a strength and toughness of 75. Meaning a total net bonus towards lifting of 14.

This allows your character to press 675 kilograms, or about 1,500 pounds, aka about a thousand pounds less than a Marine. Don't get me wrong, that's ridiculously strong by IRL human standards, I honestly don't think a human being has ever lifted that much, but that is of course, the best possible result you could get, the absolute peak of human capability in the system that isn't derived through augmenting yourself, via gak like bionics, becoming a Vindicare Assassin, or psychic powers/sorcery (Hammerhand too strong).

A Space Marine though? Assuming best-possible results, it is possible to have a character capable of lifting so much weight the standard lifting chart has no rules for it, lol.