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So I thought I'd write up rules for the known Vampire Masters, and that I'd start with Abhorash

Abhorash, the Red Dragon

620 points

Type: Infantry

M6 WS9 BS5 S6 T5 W4 I9 A6 Ld10

Equipment: Hand weapon

Mourkain armour: This ornate suit of armor was, amongst others gifted to the Master Vampires, forged by Ushoran's Mourkain smiths. It is all flared ridges and sharp edges, and its style has been aped by, most famously, the Von Carsteins. It provides a 4+ armor save.

Options: Abhorash may be equipped with 1 of the following combinations:

1. Great weapon

2. Additional Hand weapon

3. Shield

4. Shield and Lance

Vampiric Powers: Red Fury, Quickblood

Martial Honor: Abhorash must issue a challenge if there is an enemy lord or hero who can accept it. Similarly, he must accept challenges from all enemy lords and heroes. Furthermore, as Abhorash holds martial skill above all other pursuits, he is not a wizard, unlikely other vampires.

Special Rules: Undead, Vampiric, Frenzy

Supreme Swordsman: Abhorash was the greatest swordsman of his era. During the fall of Lahmia, he held the entrance to the palace single-handedly against the entire coalition army of Alcadizzar. He was equally capable with a lance, a pair of khopeshes, or a longsword. It is said that even nowadays none can match him on the battlefield. Successful 'to hit' rolls against Abhorash in close combat must be rerolled. Furthermore, he has a 4+ ward save in close combat.

Vampire Master: Abhorash is one of the original vampires, making him immeasurably more powerful than the current generation. Increases to his S, W and A included in profile. Abhorash MUST be the army general, unless another vampire master is present. Furthermore, he automatically regains 1 wound at the start of each friendly turn.

Blood of the Dragon: Abhorash duelled and slew a monstrous red dragon, drinking it's blood and curing himself of his vampirism. He does not have the Hunger rule per normal vampires. Furthermore, he has the Regeneration (4+) rule.

Mount:

Abhorash can be mounted on a Barded Nightmare for free.

I think he's going a bit all over.

A small issue is saying he MUST have one of those pieces of equipment. Nothing wrong with a hand weapon. Just because it's "normal" doesn't mean it's not a spiffy rapier or golden dagger.

His ward save and regen are redundant for the most part. You can only ever use one or the other.

Having someone WS 10 and hits have to be rerolled is kinda cheese. WS10 is a pretty big deal. You know, as high as it goes. That's a bloodthirster, the living embodiment of martial combat. 1 better than Tyrion. It's about as good as Nurgle Daemon Prince, but that's also pretty cheese.

Automatically regaining a wound a turn is a no-no. That's just way super good for someone who is near impossible to hit and has armor, regen, ward. Look at the Blood Drinker in the VC book. That's still only 4+ after a kill. You're having him regen +1 just sitting around scratching his butt.


But, the main thing is you just made a really good combat vampire. He's not tremendously different than any other vampire other than auto hunger (cuz he has a cooler full of blood?) and higher stats. I'd say look at some super combat dudes like Tyrion and add a bit of flavor. Taking away vampire powers doesn't make him more vampire-y.

This is just a spitball without much thinking, but what if he could swap himself in for any challenge that takes place on the board? Whether he's in combat or not. Just vampire poofs over and takes the fight. Stuff like that.

I would shoot for 300-500pts tops. Those are the greatest VC in the VC book and what its balanced for. Not every book has access to 600+ pt SCs. The greatest TK king and VC vampire are still way weaker than him, so you're wondering just what era he came from. If he was as powerful as all that, he wouldn't have been guarding anything cuz there simply aren't a lot of 850pt characters he would be taking orders from. Maybe Nagash, but he's not playable. And Nagash's right hand is way lower points and attributes as well.

I remember somebody that had an abhorash character that they gave heroic killing blow to. This was representative of the fact he killed a dragon. Take of that what you will. Just an idea.

Having regeneration and a ward save is kind of redundant until the rules on regeneration are changed from being taken instead of a ward save. With your idea there'd be pretty much no reason to use the regeneration save instead of his ward save in almost ever except for a couple weapons maybe that focus on ward saves specifically.

cheers for the comments
re power level- he was one of the original vampires; its said that the bloodline gets diluted down in the same way that the Emperor is better than the primarchs, the primarchs are better than the marines, etc. but not QUITE on that scale. Also, he was considered the greatest fighter of his age, Neferata, the first vampire, muses that he might be the only one to match her. that being said, i'll drop the WS to 9. He is supposed to be combining the body of a vampire master with the skill of the greatest swordsman of his age. FYI he slew Arkhan the Black, a noted swordsman in his own right, with minimum effort. Arkhan basically saw him and immediately resigned himself to death.
re auto-regaining a wound- he isn't a wizard, most vamp lords are getting at least 1 wound a turn back anyway with Invoke or just the lore attribute. remember you won't have a level 3 or 4 in the same army since he eats your entire lord points. He is also more expensive than Archaeon, while not having that much protection.
re doubling of regen and ward: this was for fluff reasons, i know its redundant. Changed his armor to remove the ward, now he only gets ward in combat so regen is for shooting
have made some changes

Yah but Akhan is a caster. A 105pt ogre bruiser can beat him up. And that's fluff. Fluff is meaningless. I can just write that he died to a paralyzed kitten. That's his new fluff. I assume everything here is about balance. If you want to write a story, you don't need rules.

You chose to make him not a wizard. He can't raise zombies either, but you don't then make it every time he moves forward he automatically creates a dozen zombies. That's not a weakness then. Nothing in 8th can automatically get a wound for free. The deal is, you can cast or fight to get one, but those can be dispelled or you lose the fight (or not be in combat). If he's hit by a cannon on the other side of the map, no one around at all, he just heals up. Yes, it sucks that he might eventually be killed. Just like everyone. But he already has a mechanic in place, The Hunger, to deal with that. It costs VC 55 to have +1W. Just one. I can't imagine what it would cost to heal a wound every round but about a bazillion. But the big annoyance is there is no counter. Which is annoying to players. If someone could just dream up Dwellers Below on units without casting, even once a game, it gives you an idea.

Archaon is not a point of comparison for anyone. He really shouldn't be in the game. Put him out of your mind. He is the guy destined to destroy the planet. He is what happens when 4 GODS stop fighting and put their power behind one dude. Your guy is a mortal who drank sloppy seconds from a magic potion. Archaon can and should beat the living crap out of this guy and pretty much any SC in the game with one die tied behind his back--that's fluff.

He doesn't have the hunger
Not getting to raise zombies is deliberate
his getting 1 wound back is compensating for him not being able to heal himself by casting, although i do see your point re being a bit overpowered
there is a counter: he has frenzy, bait him around with 55 points of harpies per turn
my reference to arkhan was the retconned version according to the Nagash trilogy by BL rather than the TK army book
Even in the old undead background in the army books though Abhorash was the best fighter of his time, period.
Saying Archaon shouldn't be in the game is... eh. He CAN be countered. There are things that can kill him.

I know he doesn't have the hunger. He has something 50 times better. No, it's not rewarding him, it's giving him a better power than anyone in any book has. All because he gave up a lvl 1.

There's a theoretical counter to everything, but you're not getting it. You could give him a 1+ armor save 1+ ward save and heals to full every turn and say there's a counter. But the counter is way outsized unless he's a 3000pt char.

BL is writing fiction. It isn't a game manual. Everything is over the top in those books. It doesn't have to mesh with other books. If you want to make it just fiction, that's fine. Just give him all 10 stats and say he can't die by any means cuz he's all vampirey. If you want to know if that's balanced, no, it's not.

Archaon shouldn't be in the game because people use him as a benchmark. Let me repeat this: he is going to destroy the planet. Not a thousand people. Not a race. Every person of every race on the entire earth. Including, if he's still alive, this guy. Archaon is not someone to balance against. Because if there were like a dozen planet-destroying guys walking around, one of them is sooner or later going to trip and destroy the planet. He's designed for campaign play. They just put out models of him and such so they can't get rid of him.

'a dozen planet-destroying guys walking around'
have you played Warhammer 40k?
literally dozens of them
including the equivalent of Archaeon

This isn't 40K. 40K is silly. But moreover, it has tens of thousands of trillions of bazillions of worlds. WHFB has one world--that is only marginally explored and populated.

A single daemon incursion that is successful ends the game. People start playing Daemon Hammer Daemon Battles.

DukeRustfield wrote:
People start playing Daemon Hammer Daemon Battles.

7th ed in a nutshell..


But seriously. I understand the need for him to be powerful, so just give him HKB and KB on a 5+ or something, going overboard on stats is just silly. I do like the way you're going with it. But my personal preference is for bloodlines to come back.

Bloodlines probably shouldn't come back tbh, the nasty things a Blood Dragon could do almost shame me for them being my favourite bloodline...

OT: I honestly think he is a bit overboard, but then I don't think characters like Archaon and Abhorash should have rules, because they are above the best of the best in a sense, when it comes do doing what they do, they have no equals.

Take Orion for example, he is the living incarnation of the elven hunting god and look how terrible his rules are, they either have to make him ridiculously broken to represent his awesome fluff or utterly terrible so he doesn't become over powered.

Yeah, part of the problem is this is a simple D6 game. And I like that. A gnoblar can theoretically kill a bloodthirster. In 40K you have situations (like with vehicles) where literally units can fight an infinite number of opponents and never have even a chance of being hurt. That doesn't exist in WHFB.

So units like Archaon have to have 50 absurd rules to keep them alive for a suitably awesome amount of time, or they're just nowhere near what their fluff says. Which is why those guys shouldn't really exist IMHO.

Tamurkhan is probably the worst/best example of this. He's just one guy who rampaged down from Chaos Wastes. Even when you kill him, there's a 5 in 6 chance he just reaches out and takes another body and makes it awesome. And he can repeat that forever. That's not a guy you would ever balance against, regardless of his points. He's just meant for a campaign.

That being said though, the Tarmurkhan book does have a character tooled specifically to kill him: the empire champion of nuln who makes you take D6 wounds no armor saves when you kill him in combat
and Tamurkhan's gimicky possession thing only works in combat too

Yeah, I just looked at it and some of the rules weren't what I remembered. But still, he and some of the other guys clearly weren't meant to be played and they just gave them points because that's what you do in the game.

His abilities aren't all that over the top.
I'd do this:
Vampire lord stats (base line)
Blood Lines: Red Fury, quick blood, curse of the reverent, dread knight, master strike.
(gives WS9 and must challenge, ASF, +1W, and cast swap all attacks for 1 with heroic killing blow).

Gear:
Barded Steed, glittering scales, shield, sword of anti-heroes, and talisman of preservation. (-1 to be hit, 3+/4++ saves, and more strength and attacks in a challenge).

Still a level 1. (he's not much of a caster, but still a caster).

That's 507 points. It's 60 point in too many blood lines (buying the 4th wound and the heroic killing attack put it over the top).

So I'd round him up to 520 and call him done.
He's a total character buzz saw, but can 1 punch a dragon (very unlikely, but fluffy).

In a no special guys game, I'd drop the heroic strike and 4th wound and still run this guy.

-Matt

I agree with Matt. I really like his version as it keeps to the basic balance of the VC book and adds enough to show that he's a step above the rest.