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I haven't seen that. Looks like there isn't many examples of a Chapter having more than 11 apothecaries so I guess that really is the way it is....

Keep in mind that 99.9999% of Marine engagements result in no casualties or even injury. They're mostly small squad actions.

A single tactical squad taking out a rebellious governor, a small ork warband, an Eldar raiding party, etc...

Even rarer than the time a casualty is taken are when there are a more than a handful of marines deployed together. An entire Company would be monumental, an entire chapter even more so.

So the low numbers of Apothecaries isn't really a problem. They're almost never going to be together so there will always be Apothecaries left to train new ones. Any who are no longer fit for combat will be relegated to training initiates(including new Apothecaries) and tending the chapter's geneseed.

I also imagine that if, by some horrible event, a chapter did lose all of their Apothecaries they would send some initiates to another chapter to receive the basic training needed.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Keep in mind that 99.9999% of Marine engagements result in no casualties or even injury. They're mostly small squad actions.

A single tactical squad taking out a rebellious governor, a small ork warband, an Eldar raiding party, etc...

Even rarer than the time a casualty is taken are when there are a more than a handful of marines deployed together. An entire Company would be monumental, an entire chapter even more so.

So the low numbers of Apothecaries isn't really a problem. They're almost never going to be together so there will always be Apothecaries left to train new ones. Any who are no longer fit for combat will be relegated to training initiates(including new Apothecaries) and tending the chapter's geneseed.

I also imagine that if, by some horrible event, a chapter did lose all of their Apothecaries they would send some initiates to another chapter to receive the basic training needed.

I seriously doubt any of the things you said before now; where did it say that 99.9999% of Marine engagements result in no causalities? What, not even one marine gets a scratch from some piece of sharpenel? What, does Marine engagements include target training now?

What are your sources? Which BL novels wrote that rank marines extracted gene-seeds using combat knives? Which BL novel showed that Space Marines literally walked through battle zones after battle zones without losing combat effectiveness 99.9999% of the time? Man, stop trolling, that 99.9999% claim is baseless, and you know it. Now produce me the source where the "knife-a-geneseed" you speak of.

Marines typically don't need medics in the conventional sense. The armor they have and all the enhancements keep them going. If it gets too bad then they can go into a coma. Battle brothers would guard fallen marines for gene seed extractions but an apothecary is mainly there to harvest gene seed and the occasional assistance and check up within the chapter. Mental duress is handled by a chaplin. I would even go as far to say that should a marine lose a limb he'll be able to casually walk to a tech marine and point to a bionic replacement and have it built.

If I remember correctly they have apothecarion serfs

There are a few points that I would like to point out. First of all, a chapter of space marines is 1000 Marines, ie. Fighting men. That does not count command staff of the various companies. It also does not count the marines assigned to vehicles as crewmen. Nor is that 1000 Marines count including other chapter resource departments such as the Reclusiary, the Apothecary, the Armoury, the Chapter fleet, etc, etc, etc.

Secondly, in a military force, specifically human/superhuman. A person's skills towards a specialist role, would be determined by natural aptitude and a desire towards furthering knowledge within a said field. All Space Marines would be trained in basic first aid, weapon/armor tech skills, proper chapter customs/courtesies, along with combat training skills. Every squad will not have a full-fledged Apothecary, Tech-Marine, Chaplain, Champion/Sniper. But every squad will probably have 1Marine who is a little bit stronger than his squad in a particular field of interest. They could be the squad "go-to" guy for that situation at hand.
Think of the specialist marines as marines whom have had at least a decade's worth of dedicated training within their respective field of expertise.

 lcmiracle wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Keep in mind that 99.9999% of Marine engagements result in no casualties or even injury. They're mostly small squad actions.

A single tactical squad taking out a rebellious governor, a small ork warband, an Eldar raiding party, etc...

Even rarer than the time a casualty is taken are when there are a more than a handful of marines deployed together. An entire Company would be monumental, an entire chapter even more so.

So the low numbers of Apothecaries isn't really a problem. They're almost never going to be together so there will always be Apothecaries left to train new ones. Any who are no longer fit for combat will be relegated to training initiates(including new Apothecaries) and tending the chapter's geneseed.

I also imagine that if, by some horrible event, a chapter did lose all of their Apothecaries they would send some initiates to another chapter to receive the basic training needed.

I seriously doubt any of the things you said before now; where did it say that 99.9999% of Marine engagements result in no causalities? What, not even one marine gets a scratch from some piece of sharpenel? What, does Marine engagements include target training now?

What are your sources? Which BL novels wrote that rank marines extracted gene-seeds using combat knives? Which BL novel showed that Space Marines literally walked through battle zones after battle zones without losing combat effectiveness 99.9999% of the time? Man, stop trolling, that 99.9999% claim is baseless, and you know it. Now produce me the source where the "knife-a-geneseed" you speak of.

He is not trolling. I doubt there is a source for 99,9999% - they get injured and possibly even killed in more than 1 per 1000000 battles. However, he has a point in practice. The Apothecary himself is there to safely extract the incredibly valuable gene-seed should it be necessary, as well as help speed up battlefield medic duties, carry lots of cures for different poisons (Marines are not immune to all the poisons used by the galaxy's horrors), et cetera ad nauseam. It's very rare, looking at a mission-per-mission basis, for a Marine to actually die - and it must be so, for they are far too costly and time-consuming to create and train to sustain anything more than very low casualties in the long term. Disasters happen, but if they had been common there would be no Marines left. The average 40k game battle is a catastrophic loss for the Space Marines from a fluff standpoint, almost no matter the actual outcome crunchwise.

The Apothecary (which I also think is a pretty cool term, Chirurgeon sounds more CSM) is also a formidable warrior in his own right.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Asherian Command wrote:


Yeah its probably one of the reasons I prefer many other sci-fi books and universes to 40ks.

Maybe its because at least some know that super humans are still human. Otherwise they wouldn't be called super humans.

They're not human. They are superhuman, that is, above humans.

other marines could easily just carry back bodies/peices for gene seed extraction.

plenty of fluff showing more crude removals by non apothecaries.

barring that, send in an extraction team.

otherwise you lose geneseed and your chapter mourns this great loss and gets all grim dark....

whats the issue?

 easysauce wrote:
other marines could easily just carry back bodies/peices for gene seed extraction.

plenty of fluff showing more crude removals by non apothecaries.

barring that, send in an extraction team.

otherwise you lose geneseed and your chapter mourns this great loss and gets all grim dark....

whats the issue?

Well, when you have something intensely valuable like the gene-seed, it's usually a good idea to let the guy who is equipped and trained for it remove the organ, rather than Marine McMarineson.

The crude removals are only when no other option is given, really. Otherwise they'd just take the whole body with them (since they want to recover those valuable pieces of wargear as well).

I'm pretty sure only an Apothecary can store them safely as well. He's got a fancy refrigeration-storage equipment for progenoids on him.

 lcmiracle wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Keep in mind that 99.9999% of Marine engagements result in no casualties or even injury. They're mostly small squad actions.

A single tactical squad taking out a rebellious governor, a small ork warband, an Eldar raiding party, etc...

Even rarer than the time a casualty is taken are when there are a more than a handful of marines deployed together. An entire Company would be monumental, an entire chapter even more so.

So the low numbers of Apothecaries isn't really a problem. They're almost never going to be together so there will always be Apothecaries left to train new ones. Any who are no longer fit for combat will be relegated to training initiates(including new Apothecaries) and tending the chapter's geneseed.

I also imagine that if, by some horrible event, a chapter did lose all of their Apothecaries they would send some initiates to another chapter to receive the basic training needed.

I seriously doubt any of the things you said before now; where did it say that 99.9999% of Marine engagements result in no causalities? What, not even one marine gets a scratch from some piece of sharpenel? What, does Marine engagements include target training now?

What are your sources? Which BL novels wrote that rank marines extracted gene-seeds using combat knives? Which BL novel showed that Space Marines literally walked through battle zones after battle zones without losing combat effectiveness 99.9999% of the time? Man, stop trolling, that 99.9999% claim is baseless, and you know it. Now produce me the source where the "knife-a-geneseed" you speak of.

The Black Library does not represent even 1% of the 40K universe simply due to how writing works. The golden rule of anything is to ask (unless it's a sequel) "is this the most interesting event in the history of this character?". If the answer is no, then write about that. No BL writer is ever going to write a story where a squad of scouts go in and sack a rebellion by executing all of the rebel leaders. Or a squad of space marines conducting a routine purge of Orks with zero casualties.

Plus from a mathematics perspective, Space Marines need to kick absurd amounts of ass and constantly win battles with little casualties or otherwise they'd die out in very short order.

Space Marines do not take casualties 99% of the time when fighting normal humans. However, Space Marines often fight other Space Marines including super-powered Chaos ones, Eldar, numberless Tyranid monstrosities, Necrons with guns that disintegrate armour, supernatural deamons and so on. Even Orks are a constant battle of attrition. They take quite a few casualties when fighting these other folks so.....they should keep more apothecaries around.

Eldar are lethal, as are CSM, Necrons and Tyranids.

However, enemy humans are generally not really a problem, and neither are Orks as long as they don't have their advanced army toolkit (although even Nobz are challenging opponents if they reach melee).

A Space Marines, thanks to their large, hardened bodies and heavy armour, makes for a very defensive type of supersoldier. Their strength, speed, skill and bolters make for great offense, but their main advantage lies in being obscenely tough. You can usually patch your casualties right up after a fight, even with lethal Necrons, Tyranid Warriors and Eldar Aspect Warriors.

Though the table-top (and the BL) doesn't reflect it, most battles that both the IG and the SM fight are against other humans... either worlds in rebellion or newly-discovered, formerly-lost human worlds that don't want to join the Imperium for some reason.

In most such cases, when the SM are involved, these are heavily one-sided curb-stomps. The SM drop in, smash through whatever PDF the planet can field, and decapitate its leadership.

Let's also not forget that SM have blood that near-instantly clots, and pretty impressive regenerative capabilities. As long as they aren't actually missing a limb or an organ, they'll heal on their own. The Apothecary isn't needed.

 Psienesis wrote:
Though the table-top (and the BL) doesn't reflect it, most battles that both the IG and the SM fight are against other humans... either worlds in rebellion or newly-discovered, formerly-lost human worlds that don't want to join the Imperium for some reason.

In most such cases, when the SM are involved, these are heavily one-sided curb-stomps. The SM drop in, smash through whatever PDF the planet can field, and decapitate its leadership.

Let's also not forget that SM have blood that near-instantly clots, and pretty impressive regenerative capabilities. As long as they aren't actually missing a limb or an organ, they'll heal on their own. The Apothecary isn't needed.

I feel like, on the tabletop, Space Marines should have 2 wounds and should have a special rule about their Laraman's Organs that states that if they role a 5 or better, then they will heal said wound.

6500745 M41 Ultramarines had:

Apothecarion (chief apothecary, 11 apothecaries, 5 initiates and 31 servomeds)

and a further 10 company based apothecaries (1 appointed to the veteran company, each battle company, each reserve company and the scout company).

So 22 Apothecaries, 5 initiates (blood angels use the equivalents of these in command squads iirc, so that would make 27 that are battlefield worthy) and 31 servo meds.

Each power armoured marine has automated medic functions in his armour and has less need for medical attention than a regular human would for an equivalent injury (even severe wounds stop bleeding quickly). Furthermore, marines are less prone to shock and the like, and tend to fight on with a decent level of proficiency even after sever limb/head injuries.

 dusara217 wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
Though the table-top (and the BL) doesn't reflect it, most battles that both the IG and the SM fight are against other humans... either worlds in rebellion or newly-discovered, formerly-lost human worlds that don't want to join the Imperium for some reason.

In most such cases, when the SM are involved, these are heavily one-sided curb-stomps. The SM drop in, smash through whatever PDF the planet can field, and decapitate its leadership.

Let's also not forget that SM have blood that near-instantly clots, and pretty impressive regenerative capabilities. As long as they aren't actually missing a limb or an organ, they'll heal on their own. The Apothecary isn't needed.

I feel like, on the tabletop, Space Marines should have 2 wounds and should have a special rule about their Laraman's Organs that states that if they role a 5 or better, then they will heal said wound.

I'd prefer to just overhaul the entire game and remake the rules for Space Marines, Chaos Space Marines, and Eldar Aspects based on something like the Movie Marine rules. Like Killteam but most units have lotsa wounds.

As some other thread had it before, the Space Marine, Eldar, and Ork self healing abilities will take longer that a just few minutes, longer than the length of a battle. Therefore it won't be necessary to make TT rules to reflect those fluff.

I'm personally convinced that the writers of the 40K rules used the word "casualty" deliberately to indicate when a model is "removed from play", it's not necessarily dead -- it's so wounded it could have passed out, or it can no longer fight (missing legs etc.). Those who survived can be healed or heal themselves after the battle, given enough time.

 lcmiracle wrote:
As some other thread had it before, the Space Marine, Eldar, and Ork self healing abilities are gonna take longer that a few minutes of a battle. Therefore it won't be necessary make TTG rules to reflect those fluff.

I'm personally convinced that the writers of the 40K rules used the word "casualty" deliberately to indicate when a model is "removed from play", it's not necessarily dead -- it's so wounded it could have passed out, or so damaged that it can no longer fight (missing legs etc.). Those who survived can be healed or heal themselves after the battle, given enough time.

Astartes have both instant clotting and instant scar tissue. Eldar should have more wounds simply due to them being Eldar aspects wearing aspect armor.

 Psienesis wrote:
Though the table-top (and the BL) doesn't reflect it, most battles that both the IG and the SM fight are against other humans... either worlds in rebellion or newly-discovered, formerly-lost human worlds that don't want to join the Imperium for some reason.

In most such cases, when the SM are involved, these are heavily one-sided curb-stomps. The SM drop in, smash through whatever PDF the planet can field, and decapitate its leadership.

Let's also not forget that SM have blood that near-instantly clots, and pretty impressive regenerative capabilities. As long as they aren't actually missing a limb or an organ, they'll heal on their own. The Apothecary isn't needed.

For IG yes it is usually other Humans but they still fight Orks a very significant amount. Space Marines are usually called in to handle all the other stuff. Although I agree with the fact that still "most" battles are against humans we're talking like 51% of time. They exist to crack the tougher nuts.