Thursday, January 10, 2008

40k - fluff vs mechanics

This was part of another post, and I broke it out to make things easier to reference elsewhere.

Space marines are supposed to be nigh-on indestructible.
Even out of their ceramite powerarmour, they have numerous genetically-engineered benefits. They have a second heart, a second stomach, independently-functioning hemispheres of the brain, a third lung and third kidney complete with poison-scrubbers, a fused ribcage, bright-red super-efficient blood that provides instant clotting and scar tissue, super-melanin, special muscle-building horomones, and suspended-animation mucous. What did all that get them? A 1-in-6 better chance of surviving a bullet or knifing than a normal human had.

Chaos compounded that issue. Chaos Marines were thousand-year old warriors who'd experienced the same genetic uplifting that loyal Marines had undergone. They'd already lived 5-times as long as the typical Spacemarine could, engaged in warfare all that time, yet they had the same skill-levels. This would make sense if such skill-levels were the apex of human precision, but no, 23-year-old Imperial Guard Sergeants had the same skill-levels, and Guard Officers surpassed them. They also had the exact same equipment as spacemarines for the first 10 years of the game, despite having no factories for the last 1,000 years. Go fig.

Trusting the setting, 1 Spacemarine should have been as good as 20 Imperial Guardsmen or 16 Orks. Instead, he cost as much as 2-3 of them, and was about balanced at that cost. 1 Chaosmarine should have been as good as 1.5 to 2 Spacemarines - instead they were equal.

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