Astartes as Warband Members

My response would honestly be (having just looked at reces again in more detail)... well done... I will now suggest that the sylsth be given the not a leader attribute, since it will get well and above 'any' other species in there... therefore it should be relegated (like an oygrn) to a heavy hitter only, and yeah, it will still be good at that, but have other limiters.

and yeah, you're experience using marines was very different to when we played in the Harrow store back in the day. One of the best campaigns we ever had was one where I was gm and everyone was a marine (deathwatch), and fought nids.... but that was using mechanics of inquisitor only... there was no way we'd ever put them against cultists, or have anyone play a human anywhere near them.

From memory, only some techpriests could replicate that sorta toughness level, and they equally broke the game just as well so we house ruled to tone them down as well.
 
I must admit now we are toning down all the xenos (stripping the base bs3) I am more and more inclined to agree that ultra heavies like genestealers/marines might have a better role in mentors then warband members.
That being said, in experienced warbands they are much less of a problem I think, so it might be ok to balance them and have a rule that no single model can cost more then x% this will help tone down all the extreme gamble cases also ones we might have overlooked otherwise.
 
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Ok so still with the not a leader trait sslyth could be taken with the proposed Elite template and so now they lose there ability to get up anywhere and leadership bubble, but there stats can remain unchanged and they still have 5 extra stat points, the ability to carry counters and use all the various weapons I think all those bonuses equate to re rolling your pin tests on a points point of view (as they will still be I5) and TBH all that giving them not a leader means is if your gonna have a quasi marine you just use all sslyth warband.

Let's look at it a slightly different way let's forget the words space Marine for a while. if I proposed a new race with loads of background in the game with the following rules

4 - 2 - 2 - 4 - 4 - 1 - 3 - 7
Imune to fear, always tests to escape pinning, re roll pin tests, not a leader, greedy? (Counts as 2 models), sole purpose (can't carry counters), near unique(only 1 allowed per warband, stops full warbands of them), Elite warrior(must be purchased as an elite model) for 80tg. This is 5 stat points points lower than a sslyth, dose not cause fear. Can't use a basic weapon And 2 combat weapons. Can't get counters but over a sslyth Gets to escape pinning and a re-roll on it. Sslyth are still better than it but that's taken into account with them being 35 more expensive? How would that race sound?
 
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The race would not sound bad

But with ganger template it would still only have:
4-3-3-4-4-1-3-1-8 possibly with a 1 point higher ws or bs or i or ld because of elite (which is still not fleshed out yet)
(and I would lose Sole purpose, marines are great tactical thinkers so should have the option to get objectives)
 
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I think I'm going to dodge this in a rather sheepish manner, and I do apologies for not giving an exact answer. But yeah, you want me to say that's fine, then you can go 'ah hah!, I've tricked you, that is a marine!' I get it. Honestly I don't think what you have is overpowered (and part of me stll thinks the not a leader doesn't go far enough to nerf the lizard thing), but I also think a stealer should shred that guy you just listed. If the consensus is marines in warbands are a go, then yeah I like your way of doing it... I would also add (potentially to the lizard too), the same xp bump that the elder get.

However I think they should be WS6, BS5, Str 5 T 4 W3, Int 5, LD9 or 10... scary ass things that are nigh on unstoppable to a new gang, and rightly so. That's the role I think marines should fufil in the game. They turn up either once a leader has reached 300 xp or so, or when the gang is the underdog by 400+ points (rough numbers are what my current WiP mentor scheme is). Then they have readdressed the balance.

If the will is that they join the warbands as full members... I have no issue with the sort of scale you are suggesting. Sorry if I came across that way.
 
The maths on that race would be human 20tg
+1 strengths 10tg
+1 toughness 10tg
+1 initiative 10tg
+1 leadership 10tg

Not a leader -5tg
Greedy -10tg
Soul purpose -10tg
Near unique -5tg
Elite warrior -5tg

So so far we're we're on 25tg as a cost of the race
Imune to free 15tg
Always roll to escape pin 20tg
Re-roll pinning tests 20tg

So a total of 80tg
 
Right so your problem is that :), awesome atleast I know what the problem is. We have based all the races on there current or 2nd ed game stats why are we doing any different with the marines, yeah in fluff there fucking scary as hell but so are genestealers, eldar Orc nobs but we have them but even sslyth who are scary as balls. The fact is we're generalising and down powering all races, the argument was just used and agree by everyone that old eldar were ws/bs3, but in fluff they have always been some of the most amazing marksman in the world.

We're either need to fluff power ALL races and stuff or Down grade them all to ussablebut characterfull levels, it's highly unfair to keep some to fluff power with 5's and 6's all over the shop and some pulled down to 40k level so there usable.
Edit: i mean look at the fact we have demons in the game, and they can pull a marine to pieces but we still have them running around fighting our warbands (with reduced unfluffy profiles)

Doesn't stop as Iv suggested that we can add mentor marines that are first company heroes or something like that are at those levels and make everything seam small, but this is to represent a new marine who in 40k would have the same rough stats as sslyth or similar (infact sslyth are still better in 40k lol and more expensive)
 
So who is against adding a warior breed abhuman?
That can be used as a space marine, for people who want it or just for any of the bio engineered /warlike semihumans that the lore is full of if you think space marines should be more special?
 
I feel like the natural progression of this then (assuming the superhero class in the other thread of 0-1) would be that marines, ogryns, purestrain and sslyth plus anything else that's mega scary) moves to being species that is only usable in superhero class for each warband.

Sorry that reply was to @Tiny

@Gregor Firedrake ... I get what you mean... but wasn't the move in the warbands scope thingy thread that orks got a nerf so they arnt warbosses now, just squad leader equivalents. and aspects became the elite not the norm... so exacrchs and marines would be kicked up to the superhero class/ mentor level again?

Maybe I've misunderstood, that's quite likely tbh.
 
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@spafe but aspects warriors are on par with marines, exarchs are more like 1st company vets and low level characters.

Edit: i dotn thik marines should be the norm i think how ever that they fit the Elite role perfectly for imperial forces, and as my calculations show, even if we increased the ws/bs by +1 like @Tiny sugested to make them even more fluffy there only 120Tg (5 more thatn a sllyth still with 3 less statpoints one being wounds and a whole bunch more draw backs), the fact is no one has mentioned moving any of the other species to 1 per warband or only in X slot, so we cant judge this "race" by those terms either as thats totaly unfair, we have to look at the system as it is now not where it may go if people vote for it, sure in the futer is SSlyth, ogryns, purestrains and the like move to some kind of super elite role then we move this new "race" there as well but while they exist in general play this "race" has presedance and every right to be there as the game stands now they fit, there not over powered (or atleast there on the same power level as several other races) and they are background compliant with the galaxy
 
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This is why I don't like xenos! haha, no that is a fair point, and a poor example on my part to be fair.

tbh I don't know anymore... I think I'll wait until the dust settles on scope before really thinking too much more about marines and where they fit.
 
the fact is that the current scope for the game has marine level things in it, so marines fit the current rules scope and fluff scope. they should not be not included just because things may change in the future or we MAY go a different way with things.
 
I'm happy with marines being available, but not happy with the idea of a special race set. Why not just have each role within a warband have a list of allowed species (as they do now but maybe more granular) and simply only list Human - Astartes against a few of the special roles? Seems the cleanest option to me.

If we're doing that we just need to decide on the profile for the marine (I've stuck one in the WIP tab in my species spreadsheet based on the discussion in this thread) and price it up. Availability can be managed with the warbands and role species restrictions.
 
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Ok guys, I like where this is headed.

Please give me a week or so to do the first draft of my warband creation idea as this can't go anywhere until that is done? There's loads more to work on for the time being.

I like the idea of just adding races that can only be taken in a certain slot in a certain warband. Certianly makes adding things like that a lot more simple if they just act like any other elite choice.
 
Yeah, I think the superhero slot is a good place for Marines, and other races can be restricted to various slots in each warband, as well (which is pretty much the case now -- Ogryn's typically occupy what amounts to a heavy or elite slot in several existing warbands.)

Also, I know @Gregor Firedrake keeps talking about a marine statline costing about 200 TG, without armor, but I don't think you can have a Space Marine without power armor. (Scouts are a different animal, not nearly as problematic, just a human with +1 WS and +1 S, maybe +1 Ld, but none of the special rules regarding pinning, etc.) So if/when we get around to working out a place for marines, I think power armor should be required.

Gregor's comments about how Sslyth or Ogryn are comparable to marines because you can just give them power armor after the first game got me thinking: They shouldn't be able to use power armor. For those two species, there's a physiological issue -- they're just not shaped correctly. But I don't think Eldar should be able to wear it, either, for example.

I'll save the detailed proposal for the eventual equipment thread, but I think we need to add an "Imperial" tag to some weapons, just like you have "Eldar" or "Tau," and that could be added to power armor, as well. That way, your AdMech and Inquisition folks would have access, but Xenos and others would be restricted.
 
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Marines regularly give up there power armour for scout armour even if not still a scout, the most common are scout sergents (full blown marines in scout armour) there is also several references (the coolest one being in the latest eisenhorn book) of marines forsaking power and scout armour all together to disguise themselves a little and relying on their genetic superiority so no I don't believe power armour is a prerequisite because there is plenty of fluff to support it not having to be. But if your argument has boiled down to power Amour on marines you can still get one in the 30% of a warband limit with both tinys and my proposals and this come in under your 350tg cap. 300tg is perfectly achievable for many models in the game to start with and we should again not not include marines when you can get them working the proposed limitations and for the same kind of points as other models in the game!

Power armour can be crafted for anyone if the builder is good enough lol, if you can build it small for squata you can build it big for ogryns or with extra arms for sslyth. though limiting who can wear power armour could be a good thing, or putting a premium on non standard power armour to represent rare power armour builds. some eldar aspect armour is power armour equivalent though (3+ save) but imperials being the only people capable of wearing 3+ save dose sound like a balancing factor in some ways and could be good, but what about other races with 3+ save armour.

I like the idea of an imperial tag cause xeno get all the imperial gear, that don't make sense. Though how it currently works for mixed warbands is if you have a member of a species in a warband everyone can use their kit. So you could limit powe armour to imperial but you just include a human and anyone can use it again

My proposal for an astartes race as above means that if you made them ganger equivalents, or elites that took two skills instead of the stat upgrades (like infiltrate and something sneaky) you could easily represent a scout ws/bs 3 s/t 4 marines you just give em carapace and Tada scouts :) so it has multiple uses people can chose to represent tactical marines or scouts with it, two birds one stone and again pointed nice and fairly :)
 
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Gregor's comments about how Sslyth or Ogryn are comparable to marines because you can just give them power armor after the first game got me thinking: They shouldn't be able to use power armor. For those two species, there's a physiological issue -- they're just not shaped correctly. But I don't think Eldar should be able to wear it, either, for example.

I'll save the detailed proposal for the eventual equipment thread, but I think we need to add an "Imperial" tag to some weapons, just like you have "Eldar" or "Tau," and that could be added to power armor, as well. That way, your AdMech and Inquisition folks would have access, but Xenos and others would be restricted.

I think Species tags is the best way, so you can have Human kit, stuff that only fits or works for humans, probably excluding abhumans as they would be the wrong shape, though that makes Afriel Strain problematic as they should be able to use anything a normal human can.

Best way might be to have a 'usable by' column for each item, which would simply list either species (Ogryn) or groups of species (Ab-Human) in the same way warband role entries will. This could either be as well as or instead of the current races column, though I'd vote for changing that to Origin, then you could say only Tau can buy items of Tau origin (barring special rules) but most tau weapons would be usable by anyone, while having power armour be origin - human, usable by - any human, Afriel Strain or Squat (do we want to allow Tau power armour for stealth or battlesuits?).

It'd be nice to have a mechanism to prevent a Squat giving their power armour to a marine, or an Ogryn giving their power fist to a Grot but I'm not sure how. Maybe just a note in the item description that it is made to measure and once acquired can only be used by that species or size class. Might be over-complicating things.
 
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Well the proposed marine rules already include a way to stop a squat giving his stuff to a marine or the other way round by saying when you buy a piece of kit for a marine is "astartes" kit and can only be used by astartes. The kit thing for other examples is always going to be hard unless we set sizes that have no game effects for example
Squats and grots = small
Human and eldar = medium
Ogryns and sslyth = large
And when a piece of armour or a weapon is brought you say what size it is and then it can only be transferred between models of the same size, just off the top of my head spit balling
 
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Right chaps, if we're discussing equipment, save it for the Weapons and Equipment thread.

As discussed in the core thread, Astartes are no longer being worked on for the current iteration of the rules document so lets let the thread die in peace. We will pick it back up at a more appropriate time.

That said, A simple rule stating:

"Weapons may not be swapped between models of different sizes. E.g. An Ogryn or Big Mutie cannot use a weapon made for a man-sized fighter and vise versa. Armour is generally tailored to fit a certain body shape and may not be swapped between members of a different species."

Would solve most issues. Campaign Arbitrators discretion if further issues arise.