Space Marine Stats.

[Lord Borak]

Right, in the Rule book we have stats for artemis in the 70's. However he's a Marine Captain with hundreds of years experience. What would a 'normal' marine look like statwise? 60's for WS and BS? The same goes for mental stats as well.

I know it's the old case of 'what's his background?' but I'm just looking for an average here. 50's for a scout? 60's for a Marine? 70's for Veterans and Captains?

[Van Helser]

It's one of the things about the rule book characters that's most often criticised - the start of the book details suggested values for what level of ability the stats represent, and then they ignore their own advice for the sample characters. If I doubt, I always go with the start of the book.

Space Marines are a bit more of a special case. I think the expanded rules presented in Dark Magenta 2 by Eoin Whelan are excellent and are the best place to lay the foundations for a Space Marine character, whether he's a scout, tactical marine, veteran or captain: http://www.darkmagenta.net/articles/DARK_MAGENTA_ISSUE_2_INTERIM.pdf

Ruaridh

[Alyster Wick]

I fully endorse the DM article. Not many characters have WS and BS up in the 70s, so I think it really accurately reflects the fact that these guys are extremely well rounded in their training. If you have an SM that you want to really have specialize then I don't think there's anything wrong with bumping up one combat stat a bit at a minor cost (or, depending on background, no cost) to the other.

[Lord Borak]

Well, I was just thinking about my Jade Tiger Marine. He's just a normal battle brother so not even a Veteran. I haven't concocted a background for him yet but my chapter is highly active/aggressive and warlike but shuns the wider Imperium. Their recruitment is mainly down to cloning which has created some highly unstable characters.

So I was thinking of Just some basic stats but maybe a 'chapter trait' in the form of a mental illness. I'll see when I get him painted.

The DM article is nice, I haven't seen that before. The strength and toughness stats are seriously reduced. Personally I think the str & T are too low. T75 is too low, a human could get that tough. I know there's lots of organ bonuses but it just doesn't sit right with me. How do they actually play in the game?

[MarcoSkoll]

In four words: Like a Space Marine.

In many ways, the Dark Magenta rules actually make them tougher than the rulebook - the ability to ignore the first stunned result per turn is huge, for example. They get True Grit, downgrade all bleeding and many system shock results, bullets can flatten against their skulls, their bonuses and re-rolls against poisons actually make them less likely to fail, etc.

The only downsides are that their healing isn't a near guaranteed recovery of D3+10 injury and they occasionally take multiple injury levels from one hit now.

And that's actually a good thing, as originally a T150 marine in armour needed to take 26 damage from a single hit to take two injury levels, which even plasma or melta guns often don't manage... but they'd still take an injury level from a stub-gun getting just a single point past their armour!

A lot of the toughness systems break down rather badly much past T80 - BIV ends up with too little granularity, toughness bonuses get absurd, system shock becomes laughable, etc - so at that point it's really better to represent toughness with special rules (Dark Magenta's Ogryn rules do something similar, giving them a Toughness in the 80s, but two extra levels of light injury).

In any case, my non-Marine characters with toughnesses around T75 aren't exactly normal humans anyway.
The parts of S.Sgt. Silva Birgen (T73) that aren't entirely bionic are augmented and reinforced - not to mention just how much natural muscle exists to allow her to achieve athletic feats with her considerable 134 kilo (298 lb) weight.
Lord Marcus Karlmunn (T80) is a 215 cm (7 foot) tall death worlder, from a culture somewhere between feudal and tribal (being high status demands that you're directly useful to the survival of the group. For the Karlmunns, their family has been exceptional hunters for generations).

[Lord Borak]

Ok, cool. Cheers for the write up Marco. I'll have to try it out and see how it feels. Is there anything in DM (something I haven't really touched on yet) about Chapter Traits? I've always wanted to convert up a Space Wolf so would like something to cover his acute senses

[MarcoSkoll]

There's some stuff about Gene-seed mutation (such as the Neuroglottis and Betcher's gland mutations in the Space Wolves), and obviously entirely absent or non-functioning organs can be handled by omitting those special rules entirely.

For example, the Astral Jackals, one of my own chapters, are an Imperial Fists descendant, so have inherited their lack of Omophagea or Betcher's gland, but have also lost their Sus-an membranes over the years*. The DM rules allow that kind of thing to be represented in its entirety.

*Consequently, the chapter fields an unusually high number of Apothecaries to compensate for their Marines not being able use suspended animation to survive extreme trauma. (They were originally built using the 4th edition Chapter Traits, and that was my fluff justification for the Apothecary Sergeant option).

[Alyster Wick]

Ok, cool. Cheers for the write up Marco. I'll have to try it out and see how it feels. Is there anything in DM (something I haven't really touched on yet) about Chapter Traits? I've always wanted to convert up a Space Wolf so would like something to cover his acute senses

I'm not 100% up on the Space Wolves and their chapter traits, but I'll make some suggestions based on your comment about senses. You could try using the detect psychic ability (or something similar), only basing it on Initiative instead of WP (symbolic of the character utilizing their sense of smell, hearing, taste, etc to "sense" the area around them). There are also the rules for fangs and claws if that's a direction you wanted to go in (though that's a little on the extreme side).

[Lord Borak]

It was more about his acute senses. I can see it being very hard to sneak up on a wolf unless you're down wind of him for example. In the books they can also smell the taint of chaos/Gene stealers so any Cultists and the like would qucikly have their cover blown against an experienced Wolf.

The Fangs I'm not so bothered with. That could simply be a 'counts as' improvised attack with the 'grab' rules or some such.