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Basically, GW have spent so long writing hundreds of marine books with protagonists doing crazy stupid things, that readers conflate this with the actual skill of normal marines.

And we get power scaling runaway effects in people's expectations of how good a marine should be.

Let's be clear, protagonism is a power that grants infinite capability to the user, not just plot armour. Anyone with protagonism can defeat a titan, destroy a planet, make a dozen berserkers beg for mercy or whatever. Because the plot is specifically being written in a way that allows them to do this.

It's so bad that people will look at Kais from the Fire Warrior game accomplishing crazy feats as unrealistic, but laugh at how awesomely true Malum Caedo's actions are. Or that the harlequins dared to kill custodes, but custodes can pull stupid bs.


GW have spent so long only writing marines as protagonists, that readers think the power of a protagonist is the actual skill of a marine. Marines need to be the fodder enemies in other stories more often, or people are just going to lose any perspective and 40k is going to turn into more of a marinewank fest than it already is.

Hear hear. The "objective" power level of a space marine is the tabletop, not some book or video game.

A tactical marine is better than most basic infantry but weaker than a lot of elite infantry. That's where they belong.

 Orkeosaurus wrote:
Hear hear. The "objective" power level of a space marine is the tabletop, not some book or video game.

A tactical marine is better than most basic infantry but weaker than a lot of elite infantry. That's where they belong.

Yeah.

Though with Intercessors getting 4 shots apiece... Blech.

The only Marines that do better on the Tabletop are Chaos' Black Legion.

In books they die by the hundreds. Heck, in one novel, the Custodian, Valerian, wades through a Black Legion ship filled with CSM. I think he got a few scratches on his armour...

The irony is that regardless of the story, most protagonists have no intrinsic property that makes them capable of the feats they perform.

Luke Skywalker was a force sensitive human - force sensitive humans don't intrinsically have the capacity to blow up a death star in a ship they've never piloted after receiving sword lessons from a guy for a few hours on a long bus ride.


In many cases, even chosen one plots, the ONLY thing that sets the protagonist apart, is that the story is from their point of view. When that happens, your ability to accomplish tasks increases dramatically.

Protagonism doesn't care what your physical capabilities are - if you're weak, you'll use brains to win, if you're dumb, you'll use strength to win, if you're slow you'll use luck to win.

There is no limitation that plot cannot overcome when it's from your perspective.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
The only Marines that do better on the Tabletop are Chaos' Black Legion.

In books they die by the hundreds. Heck, in one novel, the Custodian, Valerian, wades through a Black Legion ship filled with CSM. I think he got a few scratches on his armour...

For Chaos Marines every piece of media is Fire Warrior.

While you're not wrong...

A.) I don't particularly want/need marines to get treated as punching bags left and right. They're allowed to be scary, highly competent threats. The problem comes when the scary, highly competent threats from *other factions* get diminished to make the marines look cool. A battle between marines and some aspect warriors should cost both sides a lot of lives.

B.) Thematically, I've kind of headcanon'd that "protagonism" might actually be a supernatural force at work in-universe. As in the primarchs literally had in-universe plot armor and general "protagonism" powers, and some of that rubbed off on their sons. Similar to how phoenix lords canonically bend fate around themselves, I could see astartes having some sort of low-key fate manipulation powers that frequently let them pull off stunts or endure damage they frankly shouldn't be able to. Sort of akin to the less flashy miracles of sororitas.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
While you're not wrong...

A.) I don't particularly want/need marines to get treated as punching bags left and right. They're allowed to be scary, highly competent threats. The problem comes when the scary, highly competent threats from *other factions* get diminished to make the marines look cool. A battle between marines and some aspect warriors should cost both sides a lot of lives.

B.) Thematically, I've kind of headcanon'd that "protagonism" might actually be a supernatural force at work in-universe. As in the primarchs literally had in-universe plot armor and general "protagonism" powers, and some of that rubbed off on their sons. Similar to how phoenix lords canonically bend fate around themselves, I could see astartes having some sort of low-key fate manipulation powers that frequently let them pull off stunts or endure damage they frankly shouldn't be able to. Sort of akin to the less flashy miracles of sororitas.

Eh… B feels like a hell of a stretch.
A is fair, though.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
While you're not wrong...

A.) I don't particularly want/need marines to get treated as punching bags left and right. They're allowed to be scary, highly competent threats. The problem comes when the scary, highly competent threats from *other factions* get diminished to make the marines look cool. A battle between marines and some aspect warriors should cost both sides a lot of lives.

B.) Thematically, I've kind of headcanon'd that "protagonism" might actually be a supernatural force at work in-universe. As in the primarchs literally had in-universe plot armor and general "protagonism" powers, and some of that rubbed off on their sons. Similar to how phoenix lords canonically bend fate around themselves, I could see astartes having some sort of low-key fate manipulation powers that frequently let them pull off stunts or endure damage they frankly shouldn't be able to. Sort of akin to the less flashy miracles of sororitas.

Marines have had 30 years of books not displaying them in their normal elite status, but in their protagonism uber status so it's already highly imbalanced. They never get to be the opposite, which needs to happen for them to balance out.

If you simply scale them back to competent going forward, 99% of all fiction would still depict them in the protagonist state, it doesn't help anyone coming in reading the fiction to understand relative power scales.


We can't even get one tau fire warrior protagonist to be taken seriously, but people froth at Malum caedo.

Marines need to be mooks in other books to at all start to balance out their depiction. The more their power level yoyos, the harder it is for anyone reading to think that being a protagonist reflects their true skill level. Otherwise, they just come across as always Malum Caedo level and it makes everything look dumb.

 Orkeosaurus wrote:
Hear hear. The "objective" power level of a space marine is the tabletop, not some book or video game.

A tactical marine is better than most basic infantry but weaker than a lot of elite infantry. That's where they belong.

The trouble is, though, tabletop Marines have been creeping in power substantially in order to make them more like the protagonists in those books.

It's the whole reason basic Marines were given 2 wounds apiece, which resulted in most small arms in the game not being worth the paper they're printed on.

Not to mention the gradual absorption of all the things that were once USPs for xeno factions.

I fully agree. And I want to elaborate a bit on why I think this happened with Marines so much.

It's because they're essentially designed to be protagonists from the word go. They were conceived as a way for players to have "your dudes", painting their own heraldry on whatever local chapter happened to be in the subsector.

They have Power Armour, which means that they can cinematically survive being shot with small arms, something other humans in the setting can't really do. This makes their plot armour into real armour.

Another trope is the hero being wounded but carrying on. That can seem silly if taken to an extreme, but Marines have all these extra clotting factors, extra organs and so on to mean that they're designed to survive dramatic injuries and keep going.

So the attraction to write very "protagonist-y" styles of stories with them is very strong.

Add to that the Primarchs with their stupid personalities, tropey quirks and super powers and you can see why 40K has been turning more and more into a super-hero style universe over time.

I always felt the tabletop was the best corrective to this, because marines on the tabletop were so different to the exaggerations in the stories that I felt it grounded things. I thought they worked pretty well from 2e-5e when I was playing the game a lot. But gradually as the fiction got more popular and fanboys took over the background and rules writing from the original creators it started to change until now Marines are warping the design of the entire game by all having two wounds, causing the lethality to increase across the board to compensate and leading to all sorts of downstream issues for non-marine factions.

But it's my contention that the game has been designed around Marines from at least 3e (the old AP system was clearly designed with them in mind and other factions as an afterthought) and arguably even earlier.

Movie Marines were in White Dwarf just over 20 years ago so I'm not sure this is a new phenomenon.

Maybe its age, but I'm long past Marine hatred and 40k being a marinewank fest is just a multiple decade reality.

I like the fact Marines have gained more wounds and other stats in 40k to separate them from other factions. I can understand some hostility on the grounds that say a Striking Scorpion or the now humbled Necron Warrior was once higher in the food chain - but I don't think pushing marines down with the general inflation of power that occurs with almost every new release was or is good for the game. (I also think, while its a source of bitterness, that if the "idea" of mass Necron Warriors acting as a silver tide is to appear on the table, they need to be relatively low points and therefore not that individually powerful.)

But then perhaps I have strange views on this. I think for instance a Grey Knight or a Custodes should have Daemon Prince level stats - but clearly in turn they couldn't exist as "armies". You'd get to bring one or at a push a small 3 person squad (they'd need to be weaker then) in an an Imperial Force like say assassins. But I can see that GW prefers selling more models to this version of the rules.

But then maybe this is in turn due to being increasingly separate from the lore. I don't really care if GW write some short fluff to the tune of "my dad's bigger than your dad". Because invariably next week it will be reversed. The issue is whether its written well - and usually it isn't.

Its a mystery to me for instance why almost any BL book written about Eldar has to be kind of trash. Then the cry goes up that no one is interested - but this is due to the fact they are bad. Normally everyone gets to be the protagonist of their own story. With Eldar they seem to blunder around like idiots, half of them invariably die, and then maybe they achieve what they wanted but it never really matters.

People say things like "ah, but if the Eldar win such and such it will change the setting" - but in that case don't write books with such crazy stakes. Every random Marine bolter porn book isn't "and lo, we're off to murder Abaddon and end the Long War."

A long time ago, there was a semi-joking article in White Dwarf that presented optional rules for playing "movie marines", space marines that have the stats you'd expect based on their depiction in fiction and/or if you had space marines as an action movie star.

I think the idea of that article was fun, and frankly I find the idea of having alternative stat lines and point values as a fun thing to include for people who want to have fun with it. Like.. having a ten man squad of firstborn space marines that count as 1,000 points seems extreme but it can be its own kind of fun.

Tyel wrote:
Movie Marines were in White Dwarf just over 20 years ago so I'm not sure this is a new phenomenon.

Maybe its age, but I'm long past Marine hatred and 40k being a marinewank fest is just a multiple decade reality.
"

Whoops I missed your post, I guess I'm not the only one who remembers this

The more that I look at them, the more I start to wonder if the Imperial Knights are just really big Movie Marines.

Tyel wrote:
Movie Marines were in White Dwarf just over 20 years ago so I'm not sure this is a new phenomenon.

Maybe its age, but I'm long past Marine hatred and 40k being a marinewank fest is just a multiple decade reality.

I think there's been a gradual change in community perception- one which GW has adopted themselves.

Movie Marines was pretty firmly tongue-in-cheek. All the units were action movie archetypes, you could buy stunt doubles to take your wounds, and it had a little note basically saying that even if your enemy has the same guns, yours get super-stats and theirs don't because you're the star.

But more than once in the last few years I've heard Movie Marines referred to as lore-accurate Marines, with players lamenting that their models on the tabletop should be as powerful as that list. And GW has certainly leaned a little bit in that direction as well with Primaris, giving Marines a second wound, an everything-you-can-do-I-can-do-better approach to their tabletop design. The degree of Marine spank in the fiction reaches dizzying new heights, and now I'm seeing people complain that the tabletop isn't lore-accurate because every Marine ought to be Captain Titus.

Which, frankly, would be fine if the franchise was explicitly meant to a Marine POV power fantasy like the videogames. It's maintaining the pretense that this is a tabletop game about a whole universe, and not just one faction within it, that makes it weird.

I think I'm a bit of two minds with this. I view 40K as a totally over the top setting. When a friend asked me how some marvel heroes would be depicted by 40K rules he made up primarch stats while I was like: Dude, Wolverine is just a Wolfguard Sergeant with lightning claws and feel no pain because 40K is just that insane.
I actually do see Space Marines as super heroes but here comes the big BUT: they're superheroes fighting an army of T-1000's and Tripods. And little green men with pulse rifles that put the space marines' rapid-firing geenade launcher to shame. And eldar swordsman that turn every space Marine into a nice goulash. And Orks that happily fire their panzerfaust point blank range into your face. Or mulch you with a literal wrecking Ball. The best of the best of mankind are just an average Joe for many 40K factions and a guardsmen is little worth more than a grot.

And it's a shame that Primaris rules try to change that and turn them into actual hero Status because it just takes away from all other factions.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
I actually do see Space Marines as super heroes but here comes the big BUT: they're superheroes fighting an army of T-1000's and Tripods. And little green men with pulse rifles that put the space marines' rapid-firing geenade launcher to shame. And eldar swordsman that turn every space Marine into a nice goulash. And Orks that happily fire their panzerfaust point blank range into your face. Or mulch you with a literal wrecking Ball. The best of the best of mankind are just an average Joe for many 40K factions and a guardsmen is little worth more than a grot.

Unfortunately, this is the part that seems to have been completely lost in the last few editions.

 Hellebore wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:
While you're not wrong...

A.) I don't particularly want/need marines to get treated as punching bags left and right. They're allowed to be scary, highly competent threats. The problem comes when the scary, highly competent threats from *other factions* get diminished to make the marines look cool. A battle between marines and some aspect warriors should cost both sides a lot of lives.

B.) Thematically, I've kind of headcanon'd that "protagonism" might actually be a supernatural force at work in-universe. As in the primarchs literally had in-universe plot armor and general "protagonism" powers, and some of that rubbed off on their sons. Similar to how phoenix lords canonically bend fate around themselves, I could see astartes having some sort of low-key fate manipulation powers that frequently let them pull off stunts or endure damage they frankly shouldn't be able to. Sort of akin to the less flashy miracles of sororitas.

Marines have had 30 years of books not displaying them in their normal elite status, but in their protagonism uber status so it's already highly imbalanced. They never get to be the opposite, which needs to happen for them to balance out.

Respectfully, this seems silly to me. We don't need to spend the next three decades making marines get suplexed by gretchen and having chapter masters get solo'd by guardsmen for the sake of "balancing things out." Just respect their opponents more going forward, and keep writing books from the PoV of other factions.

What that means is that no other faction gets a protagonist that does what marines do - if their enemies are marines.

That marines appear like protagonists in the books of other factions.
.

 Hellebore wrote:
What that means is that no other faction gets a protagonist that does what marines do - if their enemies are marines.

That marines appear like protagonists in the books of other factions.
.

Not sure what you're trying to say here. I don't want other factions to be written as Marty Stus the way marines often are. I also don't want marines to be written as Marty Stus. When a marine faces an incubi in a story, I want that to be a dangerous fight for both of them regardless of whose book they're in or who ultimately wins.

If you want to write a story where some aspect warriors or stealth suits or whatever flex on the enemy and get to show off their skills, then don't make marines the (only) antagonist of that story. They don't exist to fill the story niche of getting dunked on, just like aspect warriors and tau elites shouldn't.

I feel like the Shadowsun novel did a pretty good job with this. The main antagonists are Death Guard. Throughout the novel, Shadowsun and pals manage to pull off some mildly silly special ops bad company antics. The protagonists get to show off their skills, dunk on some plague zombies, and generally look cool doing it. They manage to achieve their goals (more or less) despite the odds being against them. But they author never stoops to making the Death Guard seem weak. You always have the impression that a fight involving one of the astartes is a dangerous fight that could get one of your protagonists killed. The marine forces are framed as this inevitable, creeping threat that the tau will be absolutely wrecked by in a head-on fight, so the protagonists have to use speed, stealth, and cunning to figure out a solution.

End result: tau-aligned guys look cool. Death Guard still seem scary.

Or for a loyalist-related conflict, Harrowmaster has some Alpha Legion goign up against a newly-minted primaris chapter. The book does a good job of making the antagonist primaris marines feel powerful and competent, but with reasonable weaknesses that the Alpha Legion can exploit. Which actually serves to make the Alpha Legion look *more* impressive because it lets them show off the cunning that is a big part of their shtick. There are a couple of moments where the main character gets to take down more than his fair share of loyalists, but it's generally framed as the result of daemonic gifts or the advantage of surprise, and you get the impression that those asymmetrical kills are about to get balanced out in a hurry if the protagonist doesn't do something clever.

All those are examples of space marines looking good in other people's books.

There are hundreds of marine led books where they are Marty Stu's, stopping that from now on does nothing to the image of them for readers.

Making marines scary in xenos books is the exact opposite of what you want to see because they're already dumb in their own. It's just doubling up on their protagonist power.

They don't make everyone else look good in marine books. So there's hundreds of books with marine protagonists and everyone else looking stupid.

 Hellebore wrote:
All those are examples of space marines looking good in other people's books.

There are hundreds of marine led books where they are Marty Stu's, stopping that from now on does nothing to the image of them for readers.

Making marines scary in xenos books is the exact opposite of what you want to see because they're already dumb in their own. It's just doubling up on their protagonist power.

They don't make everyone else look good in marine books. So there's hundreds of books with marine protagonists and everyone else looking stupid.

Reiterating that I say this with respect and don't mean to come off as attacking you... I don't see any point in making marines look like chumps other than some sort of weird meta petty revenge. I'm not interested in reading scenes where Guilliman gets KO'd by a warlock just so I can smugly go, "How do *you* like it," to some hypothetical marine fan I've made up in my head.

By making marines look good in other factions' books, it allowed those stories to use marines to make the protagonists of those books look more impressive. If the Death Guard in the tau book had been a non-threatening cake walk, then it would have robbed the story of its tension and made the eventual outcome feel hollow. If the Alpha Legion could simply have juggled intercessors, it would have made their scheming feel unnecessary and their victory look unimpressive rather than being an amusing victory of brains over brawn.

Those stories use marines as a scary, credible threat so that the protagonists can look more impressive for having taken them on. If the stories had gone out of their way to make the marines look like a low-level threat, it would have made the protagonists less impressive as a result.

If someone wants to ramble on about how ultra cool marines are because they've been binging marine novels, I can just chuckle and go, "Ha. Yeah. The bolter porn gets pretty silly sometimes."

There should definitely be enemies or scenarios where Marines really aren't a threat though. 40ks power levels really do go far beyond your average Tactical Marine. Genestealers should tear them a new hole, for example. Reminder that the entire premise of Space Hulk is Genestealers being extremely credible threats to Terminators in those cramped corridors.

Howling Banshees, ought to easily be their betters in combat. Chaos Terminators ought to mow Marines down in both ranged and cqb, and weapons like Demolisher Cannons ought to be pulverizing them out of cover.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Those stories use marines as a scary, credible threat so that the protagonists can look more impressive for having taken them on.

The reverse should also be true in the Marine stories then. The opposition has to be a credible threat if the Marines are to look more impressive.

I miss when Space Marines were 2-2.15m tall, a suit of power armour weighed 114kg, and it reduced the chance of injury from smallarms by 50-85%.
Codex Angels of Death, 1996, page 8.

Oktoglokk wrote:
I miss when Space Marines were 2-2.15m tall, a suit of power armour weighed 114kg, and it reduced the chance of injury from smallarms by 50-85%.
Codex Angels of Death, 1996, page 8.

I liked it when they like half the height of a Tyanid Warrior.

You really need to seek some therapy for this SMDS of yours, Hellebore. It can't be good for you.

 Insectum7 wrote:

Oktoglokk wrote:
I miss when Space Marines were 2-2.15m tall, a suit of power armour weighed 114kg, and it reduced the chance of injury from smallarms by 50-85%.
Codex Angels of Death, 1996, page 8.

I liked it when they like half the height of a Tyanid Warrior.

Classic, I've still got some of those around somewhere.

I might be in the minority but I don't mind 2 wound marines in the current game (not specifically as primaris, just conceptually). I actually suggested 2 wound marines in 4th ed, partly in response to the proliferation of AP2 weapons, but partly because I liked the idea of them being smaller more elite armies. Then they made custodes making it virtually impossible to scale marines in the game properly without leaving custodes as 10 model armies...

The movie marine army list was way too dumb, but very explicit in its cliches, but a 4th ed marine with 2 wounds and 2 attacks would be threatening, make the army smaller and create a scenario closer to what they should look like. But in addition to that, every other faction's elites needed to be equally represented in other ways, like a banshee being able to kill a 2 wound marine, immortals being tougher, tyranid warriors having more survivability etc.

I will say, I'm not familiar with a difference in whatever special rules might apply between primary and firstborn, the main difference I see is equipment options, and that primaris have two wounds, its not even like they're stronger, tougher, more BS, more WS, or whatever else.

BanjoJohn wrote:
I will say, I'm not familiar with a difference in whatever special rules might apply between primary and firstborn, the main difference I see is equipment options, and that primaris have two wounds, its not even like they're stronger, tougher, more BS, more WS, or whatever else.

Both Primaris and OG Marines have 2 Wounds now, so it's not a difference. The only difference statwise is that Primaris have an extra atrack (which now is in the weapon stats).

I honestly feel the marines were perfectly well represented in 3e - vs a guardsman they were far more durable, had a much greater damage output and could be used far more aggressively.

Much as I enjoy his books, Abnett is at least partially responsible for the silliness with Marines these days. He just couldn't hold back from really hyperbolic descriptions.

To be fair, he does have a squad of lightly armed guardsmen kill a whole squad of Chaos Marines with no casualties too, so I guess he just swings wildly in all directions.

I always find the "How Tuff is Marines" threads very funny for that reason because certain marine fans have no restraint in how strong they want their boys to be.